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

Time and again we see leaders and members of religions incite aggression, fanaticism, hate, and xenophobia – even inspire and legitimate violent and bloody conflicts.

In the last resort, a love of God without love of humanity is no love at all.

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.

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.