Pope Benedict XVI Quotes

In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance and even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant.

How do we stop ourselves from blowing each other up because we think that God wants us to blow each other up.

The borders of Islam are bloody.

Secularism is how we handled religious conflicts that had plunged our country into a bloodbath.

The starting point is the recognition that throughout history, religion has been a cause of bloodshed, and it remains so today. Because religion has contributed to the world's problems, it must develop specific and practical ways to help solve those problems.

Instead of more violence why isn't there a [meeting of religious leaders]. It's all got to be dialogue - that's the only way. Get everybody from each religion together and say 'Listen, this can't go on. Why do we have all this hatred?'

Violence and religion have often gone together, but it's not a perfect correlation, and it doesn't have to be a permanent connection, because religions themselves change.

You're basing your laws and your whole outlook on natural life on mythology. It won't work. That's why you have all these problems in the world. Name them: India, Pakistan, Ireland. Name them-all these problems. They're all religious problems.

I don't think there's any religion we can consider an enemy. There is no religion that calls for killing and hating and fighting. Muslims can be as peaceful [as we are], and even today I'm not sure all of them are necessarily very extreme or very violent. It has nothing to do with religion; it has to do with the ones who use the name of religion for their own ambitions. I don't know any lord in heaven who declared that the best solution is to kill everybody who is against me.

The Catholics and Protestants … are occupied in nothing but cutting each other’s throats.

Both sides are slaughtering each other as they scream ‘Allahu akbar …. I say let Allah sort it out.

As long as there are those who are willing to shed blood and take innocent life in the name of religion, the name of God, the world will never know a true and lasting peace.

One cannot offend, make war, kill in the name of one's own religion, that is, in the name of God.

When we go to war I will not ask the White Racist next to me what is he Christian or Atheist? I will only expect him or her to kill the enemy as I will.

I've had trouble now and again in Nigeria because I have spoken up about the mistreatment of factions in the country because of difference in religion. These are things we should put behind us.

Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance... the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.

God's love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.

The United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam.

Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.

The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, is true perversion.

We are not at war against Islam.

I don't subscribe to organised religion. I've travelled enough to see that adherents of organised religion often attack adherents of other religions.

Resorting to violence and the use of force at holy sites is unacceptable, whatever the reason might be.

Mr. Speaker, I am deeply concerned that many regions of this world are suffering from the effects of armed conflicts with religious aspects. I believe that the differences of faith are not the real reason for these conflicts.

While the religious divisions in our world are self-evident, many people still imagine that religious conflict is always caused by a lack of education, by poverty, or by politics.