Top 300 Pope Benedict XVI Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “God’s dialogue with us becomes truly human, since God conducts his part as man.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

152. “Science can serve humanity, but it can also become an instrument of evil. Indeed, it is science that has the potential to make evil truly terrible. It is only when scientific work is sustained by ethical responsibility that it is able to be what it is meant to be.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

153. “Thank you from the heart to all those who in various ways are near me or follow me spiritually with affection and prayers from afar. To each one of you, I ask you to continue to support me by praying to God to let me be his gentle and firm pastor of his church.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

154. “How much filth there is in the church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely to Him. How much pride, how much self-sufficiency.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

155. “Dancing is not a form of expression for the Christian liturgy.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

156. “In the Eucharist, the Son of God comes to meet us and desires to become one with us; eucharistic adoration is simply the natural consequence of the eucharistic celebration, which is itself the Church’s supreme act of adoration.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

157. “Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

158. “Freedom is not only a gift, but a summons to personal responsibility.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

159. “We were looking for a ‘good shepherd,’ and instead we got a German shepherd.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

160. “Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, look like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

161. “The need to proclaim Christ boldly and courageously is a continuing priority for the Church; indeed it is a solemn duty laid upon her by Christ who enjoined the Apostles to ‘go out to the whole world, proclaim the Good News to all creation.’”

— Pope Benedict XVI

162. “We must trust in the mighty power of God’s mercy. We are all sinners, but His grace transforms us and makes us new.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

163. “Before it’s too late, we need to make courageous choices that will recreate a strong alliance between man and Earth. We need a decisive ‘yes’ to care for creation and a strong commitment to reverse those trends that risk making the situation of decay irreversible.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

164. “A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

165. “It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

166. “God’s love for his people is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

167. “Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene is a classic example of science fiction.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

168. “It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity. Through Mary, and the other holy women, the feminine element stands at the heart of the Christian religion.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

169. “The freedom to kill is not a true freedom, but a tyranny that reduces human beings to slavery.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

170. “May we be enlightened by a ray of the light that comes from Bethlehem, the light of He who is ‘The Greatest’ and made himself small.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

171. “The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced, and the art which has grown in her womb.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

172. “Experience shows that disregard for the environment always harms human coexistence, and vice versa. It becomes more and more evident that there is an inseparable link between peace with creation and peace among men.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

173. “Make sure that every person, of whatever background, can find in you a welcoming heart.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

174. “The relationship between individuals or communities and the environment ultimately stems from their relationship with God. When ’man turns his back on the Creator’s plan, he provokes a disorder which has inevitable repercussions on the rest of the created order.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

175. “Indeed, beauty is one of mankind’s greatest needs; it is the root from which the branches of our peace and the fruits of our hope come forth. Beauty also reveals God because, like him, a work of beauty is pure gratuity; it calls us to freedom and draws us away from selfishness.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

176. “You must know your faith with the same precision with which a specialist in information technology knows the operating system of a computer.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

177. “Do not be fooled by those who see you as just another consumer in a market of undifferentiated possibilities, where choice itself becomes the good, novelty usurps beauty, and subjective experience displaces truth.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

178. “How much we need, in the church and in society, witnesses of the beauty of holiness, witnesses of the splendour of truth, witnesses of the joy and freedom born of a living relationship with Christ!”

— Pope Benedict XVI

179. “If we take the Lord’s hand and let ourselves be guided by him, the path we take will be right and good.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

180. “Deeply saddened by the news of the terrorist attacks in central London, the Holy Father offers his fervent prayers for the victims and for all those who mourn.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

181. “The great tasks facing the ecclesial community in the modern world – and among the many I particularly stress evangelization and ecumenism – are centered on the Word of God and, at the same time, draw therefrom their justification and support.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

182. “Dear young people, let me now ask you a question. What will you leave to the next generation? Are you building your lives on firm foundations, building something that will endure?”

— Pope Benedict XVI

183. “I urge you to continue your fraternal cooperation with one another in the spirit of the community of Christ’s disciples, united in your love for him and in the Gospel that you proclaim.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

184. “To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

185. “Since politics fundamentally should be a moral enterprise, the church in this sense has something to say about politics.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

186. “The Cross is the approbation of our existence, not in words, but in an act so completely radical that it caused God to become flesh and pierced this flesh to the quick; that, to God, it was worth the death of his incarnate Son.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

187. “In the Eucharist a communion takes place that corresponds to the union of man and woman in marriage. Just as they become “one flesh”, so in Communion we all become “one spirit”, one person, with Christ.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

188. “In silence, we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth; we understand with greater clarity what it is we want to say and what we expect from others; and we choose how to express ourselves.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

189. “By itself, the question of the liturgy’s essence and the standards of the reform has brought us back to the question of music and its position in the liturgy. And as a matter of fact one cannot speak about worship at all without also speaking of the music of worship.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

190. “Vigilance is demanded of Christians as the basic attitude for the “interim time”. This vigilance means, on the one hand, that man does not lock himself into the here and now and concern himself only with tangible things, but that he raises his eyes above the present moment and its immediate urgency. Keeping one’s gaze freely fixed upon God in order to receive from him the criterion of right action and the capacity for it – that is what matters.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

191. “Violence against even one human being is violence against all.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

192. “Civilization is now under the tyranny of relativism.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

193. “Mary had said: “Your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.” Jesus corrects her: I am with my father. My father is not Joseph, but another – God himself. It is to him that I belong, and here I am with him. Could Jesus’ divine sonship be presented any more clearly?”

— Pope Benedict XVI

194. “As something that breaks out of history and transcends it, the Resurrection nevertheless has its origin within history and up to a certain point still belongs there. Perhaps we could put it this way: Jesus’ Resurrection points beyond history but has left a footprint within history. Therefore it can be attested by witnesses as an event of an entirely new kind.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

195. “I am consoled by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and how to act, even with insufficient tools.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

196. “Men and women cannot rest content with a superficial and unquestioning exchange of skeptical opinions and experiences of life – all of us are in search of truth and we share this profound yearning today more than ever...”

— Pope Benedict XVI

197. “What a treasure is hidden in two small words: ‘thank you!’”

— Pope Benedict XVI

198. “In the month of October, the universal Church highlights her missionary vocation. Guided by the Holy Spirit she knows she is called to pursue the work of Jesus himself, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom of God which is “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit””

— Pope Benedict XVI

199. “If only everyone could experience the joy of being Christian, being loved by God Who gave His Son for us!”

— Pope Benedict XVI

200. “Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave.”

— Pope Benedict XVI