Catholic Bishop

Augustine of Hippo

Philosophy

354–430

"Don’t hold yourselves cheap, seeing that the creator of all things and of you estimates your value so high, so dear, that he pours out for you every day the most precious blood of his only-begotten Son."

🇫🇷Francis de Sales

Religion

Counter-Reformation

1567–1622

"There are no galley-slaves in the royal vessel of divine love—every man works his oar voluntarily!"

🇫🇷François de La Rochefoucauld

Military

1521–1572

"But, yet acquired qualities should always have a certain agreement and a certain union with our own natural qualities, which they imperceptibly extend and increase."

Smaragde Mbonyintege

Religion

b. 1947

"God is not found in a disorganised way. If someone has a church they should also follow the doctrine of that church."

Michel Sabbah

b. 1933

"Nobody can tell us Christians how to dress, how to live or how to pray."

Thomas Becket

Religion

1119–1171

"There has been no satisfaction, and I will not absolve them."

Hilary of Poitiers

Religion

"The Son of God is nailed to the cross; but on the cross God conquers human death. Christ, the Son of God, dies; but all flesh is made alive in Christ. The Son of God is in hell; but man is carried back to heaven."

Basil of Caesarea

Religion

329–379

"... my dear friend Poverty, nurse of philosophy"

Nicholas of Cusa

Mathematics

Humanism

1401–1464

"I behold Thee, 0 Lord my God, in a kind of mental trance"

Gavin Douglas

Literature

1474–1522

"Arguably the best version of Virgil in English poetry."

Nicole Oresme

Philosophy

1320–1382

"Since money belongs to the community … it would seem that the community may control it as it wills, and therefore may make as much profit from alteration as it likes, and treat money as its own property."

🇩🇪Michael von Faulhaber

Politics

1869–1952

"Notwithstanding all the guidance of divine grace Israel did not know the time of her visitation. The great majority of the people rejected the Messiah with the cry: 'His blood be upon us and upon our children' ."

🇫🇷Roger Etchegaray

Politics

1922–2019

"Peace! Following my long-term service, it became clear to me that peace is to be built in peaceful times, rather than in the times of war."

🇮🇹Pope John Paul II

Religion

1920–2005

"The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn."

Pope Leo XIII

Religion

1810–1903

"Keller, Joseph Edward. The Life and Acts of Pope Leo XIII, Benziger, 1882"

🇫🇷François Fénelon

Literature

1651–1715

"True love goes ever straight forward, not in its own strength, but esteeming itself as nothing. Then indeed we are truly happy. The cross is no longer a cross when there is no self to suffer under it."

"If Stalin had learned to play cricket, the world might now be a better place."

"As the parish goes, so goes the faith of the people."