Pope John Paul II

You are our dearly beloved brothers, and in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.

The unworthy successor of Peter who desires to benefit from the immeasurable wealth of Christ feels the great need of your assistance, your prayers, your sacrifice, and he most humbly asks this of you.

Today, for the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil. This fair land, once a distant outpost of the pagan world, has become, through the preaching of the Gospel, a beloved and gifted portion of Christ's vineyard.

The vow of celibacy is a matter of keeping one's word to Christ and the Church. a duty and a proof of the priest's inner maturity; it is the expression of his personal dignity.

Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire.

Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men.

You are priests, not social or political leaders. Let us not be under the illusion that we are serving the Gospel through an exaggerated interest in the wide field of temporal problems.

Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore... prove ultimately futile.

From now on it is only through a conscious choice and through a deliberate policy that humanity can survive.

Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it.

The United Nations organization has proclaimed 1979 as the Year of the Child. Are the children to receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance?

I hope to have communion with the people, that is the most important thing.

There are people and nations, Mother, that I would like to say to you by name. I entrust them to you in silence, I entrust them to you in the way that you know best.

The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.

The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn.

I have a sweet tooth for song and music. This is my Polish sin.

Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.

Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.

The future starts today, not tomorrow.