“I am firmly convinced that there is life after death, not in a primitive sense but as the entry of my completely finite person into God’s infinity, as a transition into another reality beyond the dimension of space and time that pure reason can neither affirm nor deny.”

I don’t cling to earthly life because I believe in eternal life. That’s the big distinction between my point of view and a purely secular position.

After two world wars, the collapse of fascism, nazism, communism and colonialism and the end of the cold war, humanity has entered a new phase of its history.

We are conscious that religions cannot solve the economic, political and social problems of this earth.

I like the catholicity in time: our tradition is one of 2,000 years.

We should think about whether canonizations, which are an invention of the Middle Ages, still make sense today.

And a third thing is the understanding of the Church as a community, a communion which is just a hierarchy but the people of God, whose servants are the priests and bishops.

A human person is infinitely precious and must be unconditionally protected.

For many people, the pope is still, to a certain extent, a positive role model and a moral force, although others feel that this aspect has suffered greatly.

Hundreds of millions of human beings on our planet increasingly suffer from unemployment, poverty, hunger, and the destruction of their families.

At the same time we are aware that our various religions and ethical traditions often offer very different bases for what is helpful and what is unhelpful for men and women, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil.

Humanity today possesses sufficient economic, cultural and spiritual resources to introduce a better global order.

The Gospel has to be the norm.

In the event that my illness worsens, I want to have a guarantee that I can die in a dignified manner. Nowhere in the bible does it say that a person has to stick it out to the decreed end. No one tells us what “decreed” means.

If priests were allowed to marry, if this would be an optional thing, and if he could have wife and children, he would certainly have less temptation to satisfy certain sexual impulses with minors.

But I have to add – and this answers your other question – this catholicity in time and in space is only meaningful for me if there is, at the same time, a concentration on the Gospel.

All historical experience demonstrates the following: Our earth cannot be changed unless in the not too distant future an alteration in the consciousness of individuals is achieved.

Everybody has that point in their life where you hit a crossroads and you’ve had a bunch of bad days and there’s different ways you can deal with it and the way I dealt with it was I just turned completely to music.

Love is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.

Brothers don’t necessarily have to say anything to each other – they can sit in a room and be together and just be completely comfortable with each other.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

Invention is the most important product of man’s creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.

I’m still exploring in a lot of ways. I don’t know myself completely.

In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that.

It’s always difficult for anyone trying to compete against their past achievements.