The Young Pope Quotes

What is more beautiful, my love? Love lost or love found? Don’t laugh at me, my love. I know it, I’m awkward and naive when it comes to love, and I ask questions straight out of a pop song. This doubt overwhelms me and undermines me, my love. To find or to lose? All around me, people don’t stop yearning. Did they lose or did they find? I can’t say. An orphan has no way of knowing. An orphan lacks a first love, a love for his mama and papa. That’s the source of his awkwardness, his naiveté. You said to me, on that deserted beach in California, “you can touch my legs.” But I didn’t do it. There my love, is love lost. That’s why I’ve never stopped wondering since that day, where have you been and where you are now? And you, shining gleam of my misspent youth, did you lose or did you find? I don’t know, and I will never know. I can’t even remember your name, my love. And I don’t have the answer. But this is how I like to imagine it, the answer. In the end, my love, we have no choice. We have to find.[in a letter]

Friendly relationships are dangerous. They lend themselves to ambiguities, misunderstandings, and conflicts, and they always end badly. Formal relationships, on the other hand, are as clear as spring water. Their rules are carved in stone. There’s no risk of being misunderstood and they last forever.

The past is an enormous place, with all sorts of things inside. Not so with the present. The present is merely a narrow opening, with room for only one pair of eyes. Mine.

Esther, I love God because it is so painful to love human beings. I love a God that never leaves or that always leaves me. God, the absence of God, always reassuring and definitive. I am a priest, I have renounced my fellow man, my fellow women, because I don’t want to suffer, because I’m incapable of withstanding the heartbreak of love, because I’m unhappy, like all priests. It would be wonderful to love you the way you want to be loved, but it’s not possible. Because I am not a man. I am a coward. Like all priests.

Absence is presence. These are the fundamentals of mystery.

You can’t measure love with numbers, you can only measure it in terms of intensity. In terms of blind loyalty to the imperative.

My only sin, and it’s an enormous one, is that my conscience does not accuse me of anything.

We all want to see that which is hidden, we all want to stare the forbidden in the face.

I am a contradiction. Like God. One in three and three in one. Like Mary, virgin and mother. Like man, good and evil.

And what else have we forgotten? We have forgotten to masturbate, to use contraceptives, to get abortions, to celebrate gay marriages, to allow priests to love each other, and even to get married. We’ve forgotten that we can decide to die if you detest living, we’ve forgotten to have sexual relations for purposes other than procreation without feeling guilty! To divorce, to let nuns say mass, to make babies in all the ways science has discovered and will continue to discover. In short, my dear, dear children, not only have we forgotten to play, we have forgotten to be happy. And there is only one road that leads to happiness. And that road is called freedom.[Dream]

Those who believe in God don’t believe in anything.

The world is always ready for love.