y La Tierra, 2010
ON BUENOS AIRES
Distracted city, dispersed city, egotistical city: cry. You need to be purified by your tears … Let this scatterbrained, superficial city be purified by its grief.
Homily, 30 December 2005
For many, Buenos Aires is a factory of slaves … a meat grinder which destroys their lives, breaks their will, and deprives them of freedom.
Vatican Insider, 15 December 2011
At school they taught us slavery has been abolished, but do you know what? It was a fairy tale! Because in Buenos Aires, slavery is still common in various forms. In this city workers are exploited in clandestine workshops and, if they are immigrants, they prevent them from leaving; and in this city there are children who have been living on the streets for years. In this city women are kidnapped and are submitted to the use and abuse of their bodies, destroying their dignity. There are men here who abuse and make money from human flesh. Dogs are treated better than these slaves of ours! Kick them out! Get rid of them!
Homily, 23 September 2011
This city does not know how to weep. All is fixed with anaesthetics … virtually all of them were earning their daily bread. With dignity! Father, let us not get used to the idea that to earn your daily bread you must travel like cattle. (After 52 commuters died when a train crashed into buffers at a railway station in Buenos Aires.)
Homily, 23 March 2012
How lovely it is to walk this way, slowly, feeling the presence of others, singing, looking forward, looking at the sky, praying for those who aren’t with us in Buenos Aires!
Homily, 24 May 2008
When I pray for the city of Buenos Aires, I give thanks for the fact that it was the city where I was born.
Address to the First Congress of Regional Urban Parishes, 25 August 2011
ON CARDINALS
The cardinalate is a service; it is not an award to be bragged about.
Vatican Insider, 24 February 2013
Cardinals are not NGO representatives, but servants of the Lord, inspired by the Holy Spirit, which is the one who is really able to differentiate charismas, unifying them in the Church. A cardinal must be able to differentiate between charismas and at the same time look towards unity, aware that the creator of difference and unity is the Holy Spirit itself. Cardinals who do not enter this frame of mind, in my view, are not cardinals in the way Benedict XVI would like them to be.
Vatican Insider, 24 February 2012
ON CATECHISTS
I hope that there is no room among you for apostolic mummies … please, no! Go to a museum – mummies look better there.
Address at Archdiocese Meeting, 12 March 2005
ON CATHOLIC LIFE
When one does not walk, one halts. When one does not build on stone, what happens? That happens which happens to children on the beach when they make sand castles; it all comes down, it is without substance.
Homily, First Papal Mass, 14 March 2013
To walk, to build, to confess. But the matter is not so easy, because in walking, in building, in confessing, at times there are shocks, there are movements that are not properly movements of the journey: they are movements that set us back.
Homily, First Papal Mass, 14 March 2013
ON CELIBATE PRIESTS
Yes, hypothetically, western Catholicism could revise the theme of celibacy … But for the moment, I am in favour of maintaining celibacy, with the pros and the cons it has, because we have ten centuries of more good experiences than bad ones.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON CHARACTER FLAWS
Isn’t it fickle, mediocre vanity that makes us build walls, whether they are walls of riches or power, or violence and impunity?
Homily, 25 May 2011
It astonished and perplexed me when I asked an acquaintance how he was doing and he responded, ‘Bad, but used to it.’
Homily, 22 February 2012
ON CHILD LABOUR
The promotion and strengthening of work for adults will make it possible to avoid [the phenomenon] of child labour. It’s very difficult for a child to go out and look for work if his parents have meaningful work that allows them to provide for their family’s needs.
Letter for the Youth, 1 October 2005
ON CHILDREN
What world are we leaving our children? Maybe it would be better to ask: ‘What children are we giving this world?’
Homily, 1 September 1999
We have, in our hands, the responsibility and also the possibility of making this world much better for our children.
Homily, Easter 2005
We should be cognizant of the emergency facing our children and our young people.
Letter for the Youth, 1 October 2005
So many children don’t know how to pray!
Homily, Ash Wednesday, 25 February 2004
Children are mistreated, and are not educated or fed. Many are made into prostitutes and exploited. And this happens here in Buenos Aires, in the great city of the south. Child prostitution is offered in some five-star hotels: it is included in the entertainment menu, under the heading ‘Other’.
Speech, 2 October 2007
ON CHOICES
Each day, we all face the choice to be Good Samaritans or to be indifferent travellers passing by.
Homily, 25 May 2003
ON CHOOSING THE NAME FRANCIS
The man of the poor. The man of peace. The man who loved and cared for creation – and in this moment we don’t have such a great relationship with the creator. The man who gives us this spirit of peace, the poor man who wanted a poor Church.
Vatican press conference, 16 March 2013
Francis is also the man of peace. That is how the name came into my heart: Francis of Assisi. For me, he is the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation.
Vatican press conference, 16 March 2013
He brought to Christianity an idea of poverty against the luxury, pride, vanity of the civil and ecclesiastical powers of the time. He changed history.
Sobre El Cielo y La Tierra, 2010
ON THE CHRISTIAN LIFE
The Christian truth is attractive and persuasive because it responds to the deep needs of human existence, convincingly announcing that Christ is the only Saviour of the whole person and of all persons. This announcement is as valid today as it was at the beginning of Christianity when there was a great missionary expansion of the Gospel.
Address to cardinals, The Vatican Today, 15 March 2013
[Living] the Christian life [means] giving witness with joy, just as Jesus did.
El Jesuita, 2010
The Christian life is always a walk in the presence of God, but it is not exempt from struggles and trials.
Homily, 11 March 2006
In the life of every Christian … there will be the experience