- “How I would like a church that is poor and for the poor!”
- “Priests must be shepherds with the smell of the sheep.”
- “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! Even the atheists. Everyone!”
- “We have fallen into a “globalization of indifference.”
- “Who am I to judge?”
- “I want things messy and stirred up in the church. I want the church to take to the streets!”
- “I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.”
- “The papal apartment is like an inverted funnel. It is big and spacious, but the entrance is really tight.”
- “I see the Church as a field hospital after battle.”
- “I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.”
- “God never tires of forgiving us.”
- “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent.”
- “I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life.”
- “An evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral.”
- “I am conscious of the need to promote a sound “decentralization.”
- “Mercy is the greatest of all virtues.”
- “The confessional must not be a torture chamber.”
- “The Church is not a tollhouse.”
- “I beg you bishops, avoid the scandal of being airport bishops!”
- “We need to promote a culture of encounter.”
- “Mary, a woman, is more important than bishops.”
- “How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?”