26 The Two Popes Quotes (2025)

The Two Popes

Pope Francis: When no one is to blame, everyone is to blame

The Two Popes

Pope Benedict: In 1978, we had three popes.
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio: Yeah, but they weren't at the same time.
Pope Benedict: I was making a little joke.
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio: A joke?
Pope Benedict: A German joke. It doesn't have to be funny.

The Two Popes

Pope Francis: We have spent these last years disciplining anyone who disagrees with our line on divorce, on birth control, on being gay. While our planet was being destroyed, while inequality grew like a cancer. We worried whether it was alright to speak the Mass in Latin, whether girls should be allowed to be altar servers. We built walls around us, and all the time, all the

time, the real danger was inside. Inside with us.

The Two Popes

Pope Benedict: Perhaps we'll find God over there, on the journey, I'll introduce you to Him.

The Two Popes

Pope Benedict: You talk about walls as if they are bad things. A house is built of walls. Strong walls.
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio: Ah... Did Jesus build walls? His face is a face of mercy. The bigger the sinner, the warmer the welcome. Mercy is the dynamite that blows down walls.

The Two Popes

Pope Francis: Speaking English is exhausting.
Pope Benedict: Terrible language - so many exceptions to every rule.

The Two Popes

Cardinal Turkson: The most important qualification for any leader is not wanting to be leader. Plato.

The Two Popes

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio: It's not easy to entrust oneself to God's mercy. I know He has a very special capacity for forgetting our mistakes. God forgets, but I don't.

The Two Popes

Pope Francis: Confession cleans the sinner's soul, it doesn't help the victim. Our whole church is in need of forgiveness. Where is our humility? Sin is a wound, not a stain. It needs to be treated, healed. Forgiveness is not enough.

#help

The Two Popes

Pope Benedict: This is your ego talking. You think you know better.
Pope Francis: I'm Argentinian. How does an Argentinian kill himself? He climbs to the top of his ego, and jumps off.

The Two Popes

Pope Benedict: When you were leader of the Jesuits in Argentina, you had all the books on Marxism removed from the library.
Pope Francis: And I made seminarians wear cassocks all day, even when they were working in the vegetable garden. And I called civil marriage for homosexuals the Devil's plan.
Pope Benedict: You were not unlike

me.
Pope Francis: I changed.
Pope Benedict: No, you compromised!
Pope Francis: No, I changed! It's a different thing.

The Two Popes

Pope Benedict: We all suffer from spiritual pride. We all do. You must remember that, uh..you are not God. In God, we move, and live, and have our being. We live in God, but we are not of it. You're only human.

The Two Popes

Pope Francis: [addressing a crowd in Villa 21 Buenos Aires] Once, a young man was walking in the woods. His name was Francesco Bernardone. Suddenly, he found a chapel - ruined, with the walls destroyed. He stepped inside. A crucifix was still there, where the altar had been. Francesco felt captivated. The crucifix spoke to him and said, 'Francesco, repair my Church.' Francesco was

a practical man. He went up to the quarry on Mount Subasio, cut stones, carted them down the mountain, and repaired the broken walls. Any journey, no matter how long, has to start somewhere. Any journey, no matter how glorious, can start with a mistake. So, when you feel lost, don't worry. God will not give up.

The Two Popes

Pope Francis: We need bridges, not walls.

The Two Popes

Pope Benedict: A Church that marries the spirit of the age...
Pope Francis: Yes, ..will be widowed in the next.

The Two Popes

Pope Francis: Where was Christ in all this? Was he taking tea in the presidential palace? Or was he being tortured in prisons, with Yorio and Jalics?

The Two Popes

Pope Francis: And remind you that truth may be vital, but without love, it is unbearable. Caritas in veritate.

The Two Popes

Pope Francis: Um, I am trying to get the Wi-Fi in here. You know how it works?
Swiss Guard: The Wi-Fi?
Pope Francis: S, si. I'm trying to make a booking, and apparently, the only way it can be done is online. Can you help me at all?
Swiss Guard: Of course, Holy Father...

The Two Popes

Pope Francis: We are seeing a globalization of indifference. There is a culture of conflict, which makes us think only of ourselves. Makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are also insubstantial. We've become used to the suffering of others. It doesn't affect me. No one in our world feels responsible. Who is responsible for the blood of our brothers and sisters? The

refugees washed up on the shores of the Mediterranean? I don't have anything to do with it.Must be someone else. Certainly, not me. When no one is to blame everyone is to blame.

#which