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Suddenly here was this somewhat roly-poly elderly, northern Italian peasant on the chair of Saint Peter and he was accessible - and he made himself accessible, he went to prisons, he went to hospitals, he went to the shrine of Loreto.

George Weigel

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George Weigel
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: April 17
Author
Political Scientist
Theologian
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Went
Somewhat
Shrines
Made
Hospitals
Peasant
Chairs
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Italian
Northern
Peter
Peasants
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Suddenly
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More quotes by George Weigel

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[Pope Francis]sees a world in need of the Gospel, and of friendship with Jesus Christ, as an antidote to the self-absorption and loneliness that are eating away at the solidarity of the human community.
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The job now is to institutionalize all of that [Vatican finances], and I wouldn't bet against Cardinal [George] Pell, who hasn't shied away from contact sports since his days as an Australian-rules football star.
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The colossal mess in Vatican finances that [Pope] Francis inherited has been cleaned up, and cleaned out. Real budgeting and accounting procedures are in place so are real professionals, not somebody's nephew.
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What I hope my liberal friends (and I have more than a few) take from this pontificate is that mercy and truth are never separable in Catholic pastoral life.
George Weigel
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The most important appointment Pope Francis has made is the appointment of the Australian cardinal, George Pell, as the Vatican's financial overseer.
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We're used to institutional-maintenance Catholicism, in which the institution ticks along by its own inertia and people are born into the Church. Francis knows that is over and done with: Kept Catholicism, whether kept by legal establishment or by cultural habit, has no future.
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[Pope Francis] has felt the mercy of God in his own life and wants to share that experience with others.
George Weigel
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The emphasis on the peripheries is also a distinctively Franciscan way of expressing the pope's respect for untutored popular piety - a respect, I might add, that was shared by St. John Paul II.
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In the Catholic view of things, abortion is a justice issue, not an issue of sexual morality... it is a civil rights issue, arguably the greatest civil rights issue of our time.
George Weigel
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[When the Gospel seems to be interpreted in different ways] is the obvious challenge, perhaps even danger, here. By its very nature as a custodial office, the papacy can't be a Rorschach test, into which people read whatever they like - whatever they fear or hope for.
George Weigel
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Be the Church - that is, be an evangelical movement that tells the world of God's passionate love for humanity. That, not institutional maintenance, is what the Church is for. When the Church is that, and does that, it flourishes.
George Weigel
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The pope [Francis] knows that the marriage culture is in crisis throughout the world, and so is the family.
George Weigel
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The Guardian,[is] one of the most consistently anti-Catholic newspapers in the world.
George Weigel
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That's what the liveliest parts of the world Church today - ranging from the booming Church in Africa to FOCUS missionaries on American campuses - are living: a Catholicism that has discovered that it doesn't have a mission, it is a mission.
George Weigel
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[Pope Francis] comes to that conviction [of family crisis] as a pastor, not as Brad Wilcox or Charles Murray. So he wants to challenge the Church to find pastoral responses to that crisis that meet real human needs.
George Weigel
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Vital parishes built on the Bible and the sacraments, committed to evangelizing their neighborhoods, will continue to flourish. The poor will be served, the sick healed, and the dying comforted. None of that is going to change, and I'd wager that it's going to get better.
George Weigel
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The only future is intentional Catholicism, evangelical Catholicism.
George Weigel
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[Jesus Christ to Pope Francis] is the Lord with whom he speaks for hours every day in prayer. The Risen One who reached out, touched his life, and called him into mission.
George Weigel
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Freedom that lacks moral truth becomes its own worst enemy.
George Weigel
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You don't believe what you read in the papers about anything else why do you believe it about the pope? That's where I'd start.
George Weigel