“God is not only true, but truth itself.”
Pope Leo XIII
“Anything done for another is done for oneself.”
– Pope John Paul II
“God’s love calls us to move beyond fear, and it gives us the courage to continue seeking and working for the benefit of all. We ask God to give us the strength to work and to struggle for love of the common good and for those suffering the indiginities of poverty in our communities, our nation, and our global family.”
– Pope Benedict XVI
“Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”
– Pope John Paul II
“Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.”
– Pope John XXIII
“God’s love calls us to move beyond fear. We ask God for the courage to put on faith, hope and love as we go out into the world and become the Word in body as well as spirit.”
– Pope Francis
“Human self-understanding changes with time, and so also human consciousness deepens.”
– Pope Francis
“Truth, according to the Christian faith, is God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. Therefore, truth is a relationship.”
– Pope Francis
“Agape, the love of each one of us for the other, from the closest to the furthest, is in fact the only way that Jesus has given us to find the way of salvation and of the Beatitudes.”
– Pope Francis
The faith by which we live shall never vary in any age . . . for one is the faith which sanctifies the Just of all ages.
– Pope St. Leo the Great
“The only true riches are those that make us rich in virtue. Therefore, if you want to be rich, beloved, love true riches. If you aspire to the heights of real honor, strive to reach the kingdom of Heaven. If you value rank and renown, hasten to be enrolled in the heavenly court of the Angels.”
Pope St. Gregory the Great
“The Child, the Lord Jesus Christ … Word in our flesh, Wisdom in infancy, Power in weakness, and in true Man, the Lord of Majesty.”
Pope St. Leo the Great
“What do they not see, who see Him Who sees all things?”
Pope St. Gregory the Great
“To do penance is to bewail the evil we have done, and to do no evil to bewail.”
Pope St. Gregory the Great
“The greatness of contemplation can be given to none but those who love.”
Pope St. Gregory the Great
“We ascend to the heights of contemplation by the steps of action.”
Pope St. Gregory the Great
“There are in truth three states of the converted: the beginning, the middle, and the perfection. In the beginning they experience the charms of sweetness; in the middle the contests of temptation; and in the end the fullness of perfection.”
Pope St. Gregory the Great
“The faith by which we live shall never vary in any age . . . for one is the faith which sanctifies the Just of all ages.”
Pope St. Leo the Great
“The Church of Christ, therefore, is one and the same forever.”
Pope Leo XIII
“We are not, therefore, teachers of a doctrine drawn from human minds, but—conscious of our charge—we ought to embrace and follow that which Christ Our Lord taught and Whose teaching, by a solemn commandment, He committed to His Apostles and to their successors … Moreover, since We are very certain that this doctrine which we must safeguard in all its integrity is Divinely revealed, We repeat the words of the Apostle of the Nations: ‘But though we, or an Angel from Heaven, preach to you a Gospel besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema’ (Galatians 1:8).”
Pope Pius XII
“We anathematize those who presume to teach or explain any other creed.”
Pope Vigilius
“Is the hierarchy perhaps free to teach what they find most to their liking on matters of religion, or what they expect will be most pleasing to the proponents of certain current views opposed to all doctrine? Certainly not! The prime duty of the episcopate is to transmit strictly and faithfully the original message of Christ, the sum total of the truths which He revealed and confided to the Apostles as necessary for salvation.”
Pope Paul VI
“The sacred deposit of truth must be safeguarded. It is absolutely vital that the Church never for an instant lose sight of the holy patrimony of truth inherited from the Fathers … This is the certain and unchangeable doctrine to which the faithful owe obedience.”
Pope John XXIII
“The future starts today, not tomorrow.”
– Pope John Paul II
“I accept with sincere belief the doctrine of faith as handed down to us from the Apostles by the orthodox Fathers, always in the same sense and with the same interpretation.”
Pope St. Pius X
“If anyone according to wicked heretics in any manner whatsoever, by any word whatsoever, at any time whatsoever, or in any place whatsoever illicitly removes the boundaries firmly established by the holy Fathers of the Catholic Church … in order to seek for novelties and expositions of another faith … and, briefly, if it is customary for the most impious heretics to do anything else, should anyone through diabolical operation crookedly and cunningly act contrary to the pious preachings of the orthodox teachers of the Catholic Church, that is, its papal and conciliar proclamations, to the destruction of sincere confession unto the Lord our God, and persist without repentance unto the end: let such a person be condemned forever, and let all the people say: So be it! So be it!”
Pope St. Martin I
“The preaching of the faith has lost nothing of its relevance in our times. The Church has a sacred duty to proclaim it without any whittling-down, just as Christ revealed it, and no consideration of time or circumstance can lessen the strictness of this obligation.”
Pope Pius XII
“‘Progress’ of dogmas is, in reality, nothing but corruption of dogmas … I absolutely reject the heretical doctrine of the evolution of dogma, as passing from one meaning to another, and different from the sense in which the Church originally held it. And likewise, I condemn every error by which philosophical inventions, or creations of the human mind, or products elaborated by human effort and destined to indefinite progress in the future are substituted for that Divine Deposit given by Christ to the faithful custody of the Church . . . Condemned and proscribed is the error that dogmas are nothing but interpretations and evolutions of Christian intelligence which have increased and perfected the little seed hidden in the Gospel.”
Pope St. Pius X
“The faithful must shun the opinion that dogmatic formulas cannot signify truth in a determinate way, but only offer changeable approximations to it. Those who hold such an opinion do not escape dogmatic relativism and they corrupt the concept of the Church’s infallibility concerning truth … Relativism, which justifies everything and treats all things as of equal value, assails the absoluteness of Christian principles. There is no doubt that the meaning of dogmas declared by the Church is determinate and unalterable!”
Pope Paul VI
“Those wretches tainted with the error of Indifferentism and Modernism hold that dogmatic truth is not absolute, but relative: that is, that it must adapt itself to the varying necessities of the times and the varying dispositions of souls, since it is not contained in an unchangeable revelation, but is, by its very nature, meant to accommodate itself to the life of man.”
Pope Pius XI
“A great safeguard is the entire faith, the true faith, in which neither anything whatever can be added by anyone nor anything taken away; for, unless faith be one, it is not the faith.”
Pope St. Leo the Great
“Let nothing of the truths that have been defined be lessened, nothing altered, nothing added, but let them be preserved intact in word and in meaning.”
Pope Gregory XVI
“We declare that no one is permitted to introduce, or to describe, or to compare, or to study, or otherwise to teach another faith. Whoever presumes to introduce or teach or pass on another creed . . . or whoever presumes to introduce a novel doctrine . . . We declare to be anathematized.”
Pope St. Agatho the Wonderworker
“Under no circumstances can we conceive of the possibility of change, of evolution, or of any modification in matters of faith. The Creed remains always the same.”
Pope Paul VI
“From the time the Christian religion began to be spread, she has held unchangeable and taught uncorrupted throughout the world the doctrines which she has received once and for all from her patron and founder, Saint Peter.”
Pope St. Nicholas the Great
“The proposition that the principal articles of the Apostles’ Creed did not have the same meaning for the Christians of the earliest times as they have for Christians of our time is hereby condemned and proscribed as erroneous.”
Pope St. Pius X
“True Christianity today is not different from primitive Christianity … She remains what she has been since her foundation: always the same.”
Pope Pius XII
“It is an error to believe that Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and to all men, but rather that He inaugurated a religious movement adapted, or to be adapted, to different times and different places.”
Pope St. Pius X
“Christ’s commandment to hear the Church . . . is binding on all men, in every period, and every country.”
Pope Pius XI
“God ordained for every man one and the same means of salvation.”
Pope St. Leo the Great
“All people and each individual man is called to come into the Church.”
Pope Pius XII
“Truth, which is simple and one, admits of no variety.”
Pope St. Leo the Great
“Beyond a doubt, they perish eternally who do not keep the Catholic faith entire and unchanged.”
Pope Gregory XVI
“The Catholic Church today possesses intact the living heritage of the original Apostolic tradition. We must instill the firm desire and resolution to guard this deposit about which Saint Paul speaks.”
Pope Paul VI
“We must take to heart, brothers, from what we were created, who we were and what kind of creatures we were when we entered the world, as if from a tomb and from utter darkness. Having prepared for us bountifully before we were born, He Who fashioned us and created us brought us into His world. Since, then, we owe all this to Him, we ought to give Him thanks for everything.”
Pope St. Clement I
“The foundation of all our confidence is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has committed to her the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will: that we obtain everything through Mary.”
Bl. Pope Pius IX
“Mary is this glorious intermediary; she is the mighty Mother of God.”
Pope Leo XIII
“Every grace which is communicated to this world has a threefold origin: it flows from God to Christ, from Christ to the Virgin, and from the Virgin to us . . . Nothing comes to us except through the mediation of Mary, for such is the will of God. Thus, just as no man goes to the Father but by the Son, so likewise no one goes to Christ except through His Mother. Whosoever will not have recourse to her is trying to fly without wings . . . O Virgin Most Holy, no one abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; no one, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee!”
Pope Leo XIII
“For, since it is the will of Divine Providence that we should have the God-Man through Mary, there is no other way for us to receive Christ except from her hands.”
Pope St. Pius X
“The Child is not found without Mary, His Mother . . . If, then, it is impossible to separate what God has united, it is also certain that you cannot find Jesus except with Mary and through Mary.”
Pope St. Pius X
“Sweet heart of Mary, be my salvation!”
Bl. Pope Pius IX
“One cannot talk about the Church if Mary, the Mother of the Lord, is not present with His brothers. Only Mary could make one heart and one mind of Jesus’ Apostles, as though Christ wanted to show us that He entrusted to His Mother’s maternal care the mission of making the Church a single family. Yes, in Mary we have the bond of communion of all of us who, through faith and Baptism, are disciples and brothers of Jesus.”
Pope John Paul II
“Everyone of the multitudes, therefore, whom the evil of calamitous circumstances has stolen away from Catholic unity, must be born again to Christ by that same Mother whom God has endowed with a never-failing fertility to bring forth a holy people.”
Pope Leo XIII
“Bearing in her womb the Savior, Mary can also be said to have borne all those whose life the Savior’s life enshrined. All of us, then, as many as are knit to Christ . . . have come forth from Mary’s womb: one body, as it were, knit together with its Head.”
Pope St. Pius X
“He will not taste death forever who, in his dying moments, has recourse to the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
Pope Pius XI
“All those who seek Mary’s protection will be saved for all eternity.”
Pope Benedict XV
“O Mary, thou art the noblest, the most exalted and purest, the fairest, the holiest of all things created! I desire a greater and more tender love of thee, and this thou must obtain for me, because love of thee is a great sign of predestination, and a grace granted by God to those who shall be saved.”
Pope Pius VII
“O Mother of Perpetual Help, confidence in thee is a certain pledge of everlasting salvation.”
Bl. Pope Pius IX
“Hail, Mary, gracious Mother of Mercy; who would not love thee? Thou art our certain salvation!”
Pope Pius XII
“What will it cost you, O Mary, to hear our prayer? What will it cost you to save us? Has not Jesus placed in your hands all the treasures of His grace and mercy? You sit crowned as Queen at the right hand of your Son: your dominion reaches as far as the heavens, and to you are subject the earth and all creatures dwelling thereon. Your dominion reaches even down into the abyss of Hell, and you alone, O Mary, save us from the hands of Satan.”
Pope Pius XI
“Mary, not one of thy devout servants has ever perished; may I, too, be saved!”
Pope Benedict XV
“Who, O Lady, ever faithfully employed your all-powerful aid and was abandoned by you?”
Pope St. Eutychian
“For if we are bidden to honor carnal fathers and mothers, how much more the spiritual? . . . If this virtue of charity has been overlooked, a man will lose any fruit of salvation in any good he may do.”
Pope St. Gregory VII
“To desire grace without recourse to the Virgin Mother is to desire to fly without wings.”
Pope Pius XII
“The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman: unique, the Chair founded on Peter …Outside her fold is to be found neither the true faith nor eternal salvation, for it is impossible to have God for a Father if one has not the Church for a Mother.”
Ven. Pope Pius IX
“If any man be outside the Church, he will be excluded from the number of sons, and will not have God for Father since he has not the Church for Mother.”
Pope Leo XII
“This Church, thus marvelously founded, assuredly could not cease with the death of its Founder, nor of the Apostles who led the way in its propagation, for to it the commission was given of bringing all men to eternal salvation: all men, without distinction of time or place … Now, no one is in this One Church, and no one perseveres in it unless he acknowledges and obediently accepts the power and authority of Peter and his legitimate successors.”
Pope Pius XI
“He Who reigns on high, to Whom is given all power in Heaven and on earth, has entrusted His Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, outside which there is no salvation, to one person on earth alone, namely: to Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and to Peter’s successor, the Roman Pontiff, to be governed by him with the fullness of power.”
Pope St. Pius V
“Neither sanctity nor salvation can be found outside the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church.”
Bl. Pope Pius IX
“Before everything else, fidelity to the Church: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. Jesus did not found several churches, but one single Church.”
Pope John XXIII
“He who is separated from the Catholic Church will not have life.”
Pope Gregory XVI
“It is a sin to believe that there is salvation outside the Catholic Church!”
Bl. Pope Pius IX
“If any man does not enter the Church, or if any man departs from it, he is far from the hope of life and salvation.”
Pope Pius XI
“What is the road which opens for us the way to Jesus Christ? … The answer, valid yesterday as it is today and for all time to come, is: the Church.”
Pope Pius XII
“Where is the road which leads us to Jesus Christ? It is before our eyes: it is the Church. It is our duty to recall to everyone, great and small, the absolute necessity we are under to have recourse to this Church in order to work out our eternal salvation.”
Pope St. Pius X
“There is only one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one can be saved.”
Pope Innocent III
“It is necessary for each individual to become a living part of the Church … to face even death so as not to lose the faith … Whoever does not preserve the faith of the Father and the Son does not have life and salvation.”
Pope Pius XII
“In Holy Mother Church lies all hope of eternal salvation … If anyone is outside the Ark of Noah, he will perish in the overwhelming flood.”
Pope Benedict XV
“The Church is rich with heavenly doctrine … sailing like a ship on the high seas of this world, preserving those who come to her safe and sound, while the world outside perishes.”
Bl. Pope Pius IX
“We are compelled in virtue of our faith to believe and maintain that there is only one Catholic Church, and that one Apostolic. This we firmly believe and profess without qualification. Outside this Church there is no salvation and no remission of sins … For at the time of the Deluge there existed only one Ark, the figure of the one Church. And we read that all things existing upon the earth outside this Ark perished.”
Pope Boniface VIII
“It must be held as a matter of faith that outside the Apostolic Roman Church no one can be saved, that the Church is the only Ark of Salvation, and that whoever does not enter it will perish in the Flood.”
Bl. Pope Pius IX
“The Ship of the Church is guided by Christ and by His Vicar … It alone carries the disciples and receives Christ. Yes, it is tossed on the sea but, outside it, one would perish immediately. Salvation is only in the Church; outside it, one perishes.”
Pope John Paul I
“We believe with our hearts and confess with our lips but one Church, not that of heretics, but the Holy, Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, outside of which we believe that no one is saved.”
Pope Innocent III
“This is the faith of the Catholic Church out of which no one can be saved.”
Pope Benedict XIV
“Therefore, let those who wish to be saved come to this pillar, to this foundation of truth which is the Church …We will never spare Ourselves from any pains whatsoever … to bring back those who are ignorant and in error to this one and only way of truth and salvation. Moreover, let all those who oppose Us remember that heaven and earth will pass away, but that not one of Christ’s words can pass away, nor can anything be changed in the doctrine which the Catholic Church has received from Jesus Christ to preserve, to protect, and to preach.”
Ven. Pope Pius IX
“O glorious St. Peter … who wast honored by Jesus Christ with singular privileges and in particular with the leadership of the other Apostles and the primacy of the whole Church, of which thou wast made the foundation stone, do thou obtain for us the grace of a lively faith that shall not fear to profess itself openly, in its entirety and in all its manifestations, even to the shedding of blood … Obtain for us, likewise, a sincere loyalty to our Holy Mother the Church; grant that we may ever remain most closely and sincerely united to the Roman Pontiff who is the heir of thy faith and authority: the one, true, visible head of the Catholic Church, that mystical Ark outside which there is no salvation.”
Pope Benedict XV
“A sin that is not quickly blotted out by repentance is both a sin and a cause of sin. Sin becomes more scandalous when the sinner is honored for his position.”
Pope St. Gregory the Great
“The soul is the inner face of man, by which we are known, that we may be regarded with love by our Maker.”
Pope St. Gregory the Great
“Let them innovate in nothing, but keep the traditions.”
Pope St. Stephen I
“Nothing can ever pass away from the words of Christ, nor can anything be changed in the doctrine which the Catholic Church received from Christ to guard, protect, and preach.”
Ven. Pope Pius IX
“It is therefore necessary to receive these Divine oracles integrally, in the same sense in which they have been kept, and are still being kept, by this Roman Chair of Blessed Peter. Mother and Mistress of all the churches, She has always kept whole and inviolate, and taught to the faithful, the faith given by the Lord Jesus Christ, showing all the faithful the way of salvation and the doctrine of uncorrupted truth.”
Ven. Pope Pius IX
“The Church must persist in the teaching transmitted to her by Christ.”
Pope John Paul II
“The nature of the Catholic faith is such that nothing can be added to it, nothing taken away. Either it is held in its entirety or it is rejected totally. This is the Catholic faith which, unless a man believes faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.”
Pope Benedict XV
“This Apostolic Church never turned from the way of truth nor held any kind of error. It is imperative that nothing of the truths which have been defined be lessened, nothing altered, nothing added, but that they be preserved intact in word and meaning. This is the true rule of faith.”
Pope St. Agatho the Wonderworker
“Diabolical error decks itself out with ease in lying colors with some appearance of truth, so that the force of pronouncement is corrupted by a very brief addition or change, and the confession of faith which should have resulted in salvation, by a subtle transition leads to death!”
Pope Clement XIII
“The present or ‘current’ teaching of the Church does not admit of a development that is either a reversal or a contradiction.”
Pope John Paul II
“Heretical teachers pervert Scripture and try to get into Heaven with a false key, for they have formed their human assemblies later than the Catholic Church. From this previously-existing and most true Church, it is very clear that these later heresies, and others which have come into being since then, are counterfeit and novel inventions.”
Pope St. Clement I
“Let nothing novel be introduced!”
Pope Pius XII
“The devil is always discovering something novel against the truth.”
Pope St. Leo the Great
“Wherefore, by the authority of Apostolic power, We declare inventors of novel notions, which as the Apostle Paul has said are of no edification, but rather are practiced to beget most foolish questions, are to be deprived of the communion of the Church.”
Pope St. Innocent I
“I have neither permitted, nor shall I permit, the things which have been settled by the holy fathers to be violated by any innovation.”
Pope St. Leo the Great
“Let nothing new be introduced, but only what has been handed down.”
Pope Benedict XV
“Let whoever attempts to disseminate anything other than what we have received be anathema. Let no approach be open to the pernicious plans of undermining, let no pledge of revising any of the old definitions be granted, for what has deserved to be cut away . . . is clearly destined to eternal fire.”
Pope St. Simplicius
“It is not lawful to differ even by a single word from the evangelical and apostolic doctrine, or to think otherwise than as the blessed Apostles and our fathers learned and taught concerning the Holy Scriptures.”
Pope St. Leo the Great
“Nothing new is allowed, for nothing can be added to the old. Look for the faith of the elders, and do not let our faith be disturbed by a mixture of new doctrines.”
Pope St. Sixtus III
“This being the state of the question, novelty should cease attacking antiquity!”
Pope St. Celestine I
“Absolute truth must be unchangeable!”
Pope St. Pius X
“We should let God be the One to praise us and not praise ourselves. For God detests those who commend themselves. Let others applaud our good deeds.”
Pope St. Clement I
“Don’t be anxious about what you have, but about what you are.”
Pope St. Gregory the Great
“This world and the world to come are two enemies. We cannot therefore be friends to both, but we must decide.”
Pope St. Clement I
“Let us teach the young in the school of the fear of the Lord.”
Pope St. Clement I
“The soul of youth is … a most holy sanctuary.”
Pope St. Pius X
“No sacrifice is more acceptable to God than zeal for souls.”
Pope St. Gregory the Great