“How easy it is to criticize others!” Pope Francis said at his Nov. 3 general audience. “But there are people who seem to have a degree in gossip. Each and every day they criticize others.”

“The young, who in recent years have strongly urged us to act, will only inherit the planet we choose to leave to them,” the pope said in his message for the Glasgow climate conference.

Today, there are many who still seek religious security rather than the living and true God, focusing on rituals and precepts instead of embracing God’s love with their whole being.

“Yet again, we find ourselves faced with the paradox of the Gospel: we are freed by serving, not in doing whatever we want.”

How many errors have been made in the history of evangelization by seeking to impose a single cultural model! Uniformity as a rule of life is not Christian! Unity yes, uniformity no!

Nothing leaves Jesus indifferent; everything is of concern to him. Encountering faces, meeting eyes, sharing each individual’s history.

Speaking at the Colosseum in Rome today, Pope Francis addressed leaders of the world’s religions and governments, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on the topic of peace and human fraternity.

“Allow me to say, we are saints,” the pope said. ”But then, by our actions, we become sinners. But, fundamentally, we are saints.”

Today I would like to speak to you about my Apostolic Journey in Budapest and in Slovakia. I would summarize it as follows: it was a pilgrimage of prayer, a pilgrimage to the roots, a pilgrimage of hope.

Baptism is not merely an external rite. Those who receive it are transformed deep within, in their inmost being, and possess new life.