Pope Benedict XVI

"The saints are not people who never made mistakes or sinned, but who repented and were reconciled. Hence, also among saints there are oppositions, discords and controversies, and this is very consoling for me, as we see that the saints have not 'fallen from heaven. They are men like us, with complicated problems. Holiness does not consist in not making mistakes or never sinning. Holiness grows with the capacity for conversion, repentance, willingness to begin again, and above all with the capacity for reconciliation and forgiveness. And we can all learn this way of holiness."

• MEETING OF THE HOLY FATHER BENEDICT XVI WITH THE CLERGY OF THE DIOCESES OF BELLUNO-FELTRE AND TREVISO
  Zenit July 24, 2007
  Papal Q-and-A Session With Priests, On Conscience, Pastoral Organization and Immigrants
  
• Benedict XVI Offers an Answer to Church's Crisis
  Zenit December 07, 2006
  "This is why it is a fundamental task of pastoral care to teach people how to pray and how to learn to do so personally, better and better."
  
• Encourage Individual Confession, Pope Urges Reminds Prelates of Norms for General Absolution
  Zenit November 07, 2006
  "Ask your priests to be assiduous confessors," the Pontiff advised, "generously offering the faithful appropriate times for personal confession; encourage them, themselves, to approach this sacrament frequently."
  
• Pope's Response to Priests on the Liturgy
  Zenit September 27, 2006
  "We Ourselves Must Interiorize the Structure, the Words"
  
• LORD, SEND US LABORERS FOR THE HARVEST!
  Vatican Information Service September 11, 2006
  "The first and most important thing for the priest is his daily Mass," the Holy Father insisted, "always celebrated with deep interior participation." "The Liturgy of the Hours is another fundamental way of being with Christ," he added, "here we pray as people conscious of our need to speak with God, while lifting up all those others who have neither the time nor the ability to pray in this way." Another essential way of being with the Lord is "Eucharistic adoration. ... In the sacred Host, He is present, the true treasure, always waiting for us. Only by adoring this presence do we learn how to receive Him properly. ... Let us love being with the Lord!
  
• Benedict XVI Talks Prayer to Priests
  Zenit August 31, 2006
  Prayer is not an extra activity in a priests life, but an essential duty, says Benedict XVI. "We have 2,000 years of Church history, with so many sufferings, including many failures," the Bishop of Rome said, but "on the other hand we see how the Church has revived after so many crises with a new youth, with new freshness."
  
• Beware of Too Much Activity, Says Pope
  Zenit August 20, 2006
  "This admonition is valid for all kinds of occupations, including those inherent to the governance of the Church," the Pope added in his address which elicited much applause among those present. Many of the crowd, unable to enter the overcrowded courtyard, heard his words from outside the papal residence. Priorities "How useful for us also is this call to the primacy of prayer!" said the Bishop of Rome.
  
• In Europe, "It's Important That We Don't Give Up"
  Zenit August 17, 2006
  Pope Benedictd XVI: We reflect a lot about this subject, of course. As you know, we believe that our faith and the constitution of the college of the apostles obliges us and doesnt allow us to confer priestly ordination on women. But we shouldnt think either that the only role one can have in the Church is that of being a priest. There are lots of tasks and functions in the history of the Church.
  
• Priest Should Be Experts in Spiritual Life
  Zenit May 25, 2006
  "The faithful expect only one thing from priests: that they be specialists in promoting the encounter between man and God," the German Pontiff said. "The priest is not asked to be an expert in economics, construction or politics," he added. "He is expected to be an expert in the spiritual life."
  
• PROMOTING COMMON GOOD WITHOUT VIOLATING LAY STATE
  Vatican Information Service May 18, 2006
  Benedict XVI opened his address by referring to one of the bishops "essential tasks" as always remaining "close to our priests," watching over their formation, concerning themselves with their material and spiritual wellbeing, ensuring they do not face difficulties alone, and performing "a careful selection of candidates for the priesthood."
  
• PRIESTS MUST LIVE FOR CHRIST AND FOR OTHERS
  Vatican Information Service May 07, 2006
  The priestly spirit, said Pope Benedict, is opposed to "careerism, the attempt to arrive high up, to seek out a position through the Church, serve oneself and not serve others. This is the image of a man who, through the priesthood, seeks to become important and famous." Yet, he added, "the only legitimate ascent towards the ministry of the shepherd is the cross. That is the door." To be a priest, the Pope affirmed, is not "to desire to be someone important, ... but to live for others, for Christ, and through Him and with Him to live for the men and women He seeks, whom He wants to lead along the path of life.
  
• PRIESTHOOD IS A SACRAMENT, NOT A MEANS OF ADVANCEMENT
  Vatican Information Service April 24, 2006
  Holy Father said it "must never be seen as a way of improving ones social standing or standard of living. If it is, then priestly gift of self and docility to Gods designs will give way to personal desires, rendering the priest ineffective and unfulfilled."
  
• Benedict XVI Urges Prayers for Vocations
  Zenit March 30, 2006
  The priests mission in the Church is irreplaceable," the Pope wrote in a message for the upcoming World Day of Prayer for Vocations. "Therefore, despite the fact that in some regions there is a decrease of the clergy, the certainty must never be lost that Christ will continue to inspire men who, as the Apostles, putting all concerns aside, dedicate themselves totally to the celebration of the sacred mysteries, the preaching of the Gospel and pastoral ministry,"
  
• Pope Favors Greater Role for Women, But Not Priesthood
  ZENIT, Vatican City March 06, 2006
  The Holy Father made a clear distinction between the idea of giving women more responsibilities and the question of women priests. He mentioned Pope John Paul IIs teaching in the apostolic letter "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis," which states "that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women."
  
• SAINT JOSEPH, ENCOURAGEMENT ON THE PATH TO THE PRIESTHOOD
  Vatican Information Service February 25, 2006
  The Pope highlighted how the example of this "just man, fully responsible before God and before Mary, provides encouragement for everyone on the path to the priesthood.
  
• Pope Calls for More Adequate Formation of Priests In Message Sent to Italian Bishops
  Pope Benedict XVI November 23, 2005
  "Given that the task of priests is central and irreplaceable, all possible attention must be given to their formation, beginning with the quality of the formators," adds the message. However, according to the Pope, it is not only a responsibility of the bishops, or even of the priests themselves: Every baptized person has a responsibility.
  
• TO THE CEI: INCREASE PASTORAL CARE OF VOCATIONS
  Pope Benedict XVI November 17, 2005
  "The Church today," writes the Pope, "needs priests who are fully aware of the gift of grace they receive with priestly ordination and with the mission entrusted to them in times of swift and profound changes."
  
• Benedict XVI Publishes Synod's Recommendations
  VATICAN CITY, Zenit.org October 23, 2005
  Proposition 11 addresses the challenge of the "scarcity of priests," stating that recourse to the theory of priestly ordination of "viri probati," ordaining married men, "was evaluated as a course not to be followed."
  
• TO MEXICAN BISHOPS: PLAN PASTORAL CARE WITH ENTHUSIASM
  Vatican Information Service September 23, 2005
  The Pope called on the bishops to dedicate their "greatest attention and energy to priests," encouraging them to remain close to each of their pastors, maintaining relationships of "priestly friendship with them in the manner of the Good Shepherd." He continued: "Help them to be men of assiduous prayer, both in contemplative silence ... and in the devout daily celebration of the Eucharist and the Liturgy of the Hours. ... A priests prayer is a requirement of his pastoral ministry." He added: "Concern yourselves with the particular situation of each priest...
  
• ZIMBABWEAN BISHOPS: CATECHESIS, PRIESTLY FORMATION
  Pope Benedict XVI, VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE July 02, 2005
  "While the younger clergy would greatly benefit, in the first years of their priestly ministry, from a program of spiritual, pastoral and human accompaniment guided by experienced and exemplary priests."
  
• SOLID PRIESTLY FORMATION IN ORDER TO FACE CHALLENGES
  Vatican Information Service June 10, 2005
  "A world filled with temptations needs priests who are totally dedicated to their mission," and who serve others "as Christ did by embracing the gift of celibacy. Bishops should assist them by ensuring that this gift never becomes a burden but always remains life-giving. One of the ways this can be achieved is by bringing ministers of word and sacrament together for continuing education, retreats and days of recollection."
  
• Mass of Priestly Ordination Pentecost Sunday, 15 May 2005
  Pope Benedict XVI May 15, 2005
  Through this ministry, you are inserted in the multitude of those who, beginning with Pentecost, have received the apostolic mission. You are inserted into the communion of priests, into communion with the Bishop and with the Successor of St Peter, who here in Rome is also your Bishop. All of us are inserted in the network of obedience to the Word of Christ, to the word of the One who gives us true freedom because he leads us in the free spaces and open horizons of the truth.
  
• BENEDICT XVI ANNOUNCES CAUSE OF BEATIFICATION OF JOHN PAUL II
  Vatican Information Service May 13, 2005
  The Pope invited the priests to make their own these words of John Paul II: "Mass is, in an absolute way, the center of my life and of each of my days." Speaking of obedience to Christ, he recalled that this "takes concrete form in ecclesial obedience, which for a priest is, in everyday practice, above all obedience to his bishop."
  
• Benedict XVI First Message
  Pope Benedict XVI April 20, 2005
  "I ask this in a special way of priests, about whom I am thinking in this moment with great affection. The priestly ministry was born in the Cenacle, together with the Eucharist, as my venerated predecessor John Paul II underlined so many times. The priestly life must have in a special way a Eucharistic form, he wrote in his last Letter for Holy Thursday. The devout daily celebration of Holy Mass, the center of the life and mission of every priest, contributes to this end.
  

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