“Life is a right, not death, which must be welcomed, not administered,” Pope Francis said during his weekly audience. “And this ethical principle applies to, concerns everyone, not just Christians or believers.”

In his Wednesday audience, Pope Francis spoke about the communion of saints, which he said does not include just those who are perfect, but also “the community of saved sinners.”

In his Wednesday audience, Pope Francis remembered parents of children with different sexual orientations, with illnesses, who are struggling at school, and said, “Never condemn a child.”

“Tenderness is something greater than the logic of the world. It is an unexpected way of doing justice,” Pope Francis said in his general audience on Jan. 19.

“It is good to think about the fact that Jesus himself worked and had learned this craft from St. Joseph,” Pope Francis said in his Wednesday audience. “Today, we should ask ourselves what we can do to recover the value of work.”

“Sometimes we live in a spirit of a ‘parking lot’; we stay parked, without the impulse of desire that carries us forward. We do well to ask: where are we on our journey of faith?”

“It is a risk, yes: having a child is always a risk, either naturally or by adoption,” Pope Francis said. ”But it is riskier not to have them.”

This is what we should ask Jesus for at Christmas: the grace of littleness.

“Humility is the only way that leads us to God.”

“Profoundness of the heart grows with silence, silence that is not mutism as I said, but which leaves space for wisdom, reflection and the Holy Spirit.”