“The service of charity is a privileged form of evangelization in the light of the teaching of Jesus, who will count what we have done for our brothers and sisters — especially the smallest and most overlooked — as something done for him.”
—  Pope Benedict XVI, speaking Feb. 24 to members of a Rome-based charity

“We hope and pray it will be peaceful, and we continue to practice our faith. The rest is not in our hands. It is in God’s hands alone.”
— Bishop Sylvester Magro of Benghazi, Libya, reflecting on the country’s future one year after its revolution

“What ‘Faithful Citizenship’ does is give us different questions to ask. It’s not are you better off than you were four years ago? [It’s] are we better off? Are the unborn protected? Are the poor left to die? Is religious freedom protected? It’s questions of life and death and war and peace. It’s not just the economy, stupid, even in this moment of economic distress. It’s about who moves ahead and who gets left behind.”
— John Carr, executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, speaking recently about the bishops’ election year document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship”

“Twenty-thousand donations have come in from everyday working laypeople. These people believe in Catholic education and want to fight to make our schools healthy again. . . . We have a long way to go to put these four high schools and our whole school system on a strong footing. But this is the kind of deep, grass-roots commitment we need to renew our educational ministry.”
— Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philidelphia, speaking at a Feb. 24 press conference about the establishment of a new independent foundation to support Catholic education in the archdiocese