“Only love is worthy of faith, in the face of the suffering of the innocent, the crucified of today, whom many of you know personally, as you serve peoples who are victims of war, violence, and injustice, or even of the false well-being that deludes and disappoints.“
“Those who make history are the peacemakers, not those who sow seeds of suffering.“
“I say this first of all for myself, as the Successor of Peter, as I begin this mission of mine as Bishop of the Church that is in Rome, called to preside in charity over the universal Church, according to the famous expression of Saint Ignatius of Antioch (cf. Letter to the Romans, Greeting). He, led in chains to this city, the place of his imminent sacrifice, wrote to the Christians there: “Then I shall truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world shall no longer see my body” (Letter to the Romans, IV, 1). He was referring to being devoured by wild beasts in the circus—and so it happened—but his words also express, in a more general sense, an indispensable commitment for anyone who exercises a ministry of authority in the Church: to disappear so that Christ may remain, to become small so that He may be known and glorified (cf. Jn 3:30), to give oneself fully so that no one is deprived of the chance to know and love Him.“