The New Pope Quotes

Do you know what is so awful about these endless battles over rights? There is no room left for poetry.

I have been in the minority all my life, Your Holiness. In fact, I belong to such a small minority that I am the only member.

A vagrant lays dying on a street corner. The government says to him: I’ll help you. The doctor says to him: I’ll cure you. His daughter says to him: I’ll give you money. His friend says to him: I’ll share my wine with you. And the Church says nothing to him. The Church is thinking about him.

The Christian’s decision to see the world as ugly and evil has made the world ugly and evil.[quoting Nietzsche]

You know what is so beautiful about questions? It’s that we don’t have the answers.

We’re always saying that “We guide people’s hearts.” But what does that mean? The heart, in and of itself, as I know perfectly well, is nothing more than an organ that beats. Sometimes it beats faster, sometimes it beats slower. Sometimes it stops. The heart is a mechanism. It means nothing. What does it mean exactly to guide people’s hearts? It means to rule emotion.

We are not champions of progress. We are champions of faith. We have a duty to be different, which is why we live with privations and sacrifices, while beyond these walls, life is comfort and pleasure. At times, these privations and sacrifices seem incomprehensible, wrong to us. But they are neither. In truth, they are mysterious. And we have a duty to be mysterious as well. This is our strength.

Sick loves cannot be treated. You can treat cancer, but not love.[to Sofia]

True punishment is served not in prison, but in one’s soul.[to Sofia]

Those who have prejudices do not know the facts.

The world once again confirms it has no use for poetry. But I am not the world. That is not me.

The collective imagination is more powerful than the atomic bomb.