Vatican Quotes

On preparing his role as young Karol Wojtyla for Pope John Paul II (2005) (TV): "I was blessed enough to meet Pope John Paul when I was 22 years old in the Vatican; I had that privilege. My mother took me to visit him, and I remember distinctly his incredible charisma and personal charm and his warmth and compassion. You felt it immediately the minute you met him, and that spirit I came away with, having met the man, is something that I`ve been constantly working on to infuse the character with. My mother is a very devout Catholic. Her criticism will be the one I pay the most attention to."

St Michael`s was one of those very rarefied, very Anglo-Catholic establishments where they rejoiced in more religious paraphernalia and theatricality than the entire Vatican. More incense-swinging, more crucifixes, more gold tassels, more rose petals, more holy mothers, more God knows what. Three times a day they played the Angelus. When you heard it, you had to stop whatever you were doing, do the Hail Marys in your head, and then return to what you were doing. Like it would come in the middle of a Latin class. I`m just conjugating the love verb, amo, amas, amat, and doingggg! you have to stand up, go through the whole Angelus, mother-of-God thing and then crack on with amamus, amatis, amant. Sir! Because, if you didn`t, Whack! Cane. Belt. Education by fear. And the really funny thing was they wouldn`t tolerate bullying between peers. Prefects could bash you with a slipper, but you weren`t allowed to give each other a rough time. Like who do you think you are? You haven`t yet earned the privilege of being violent.

Vatican II corrupted the institution of the church. Look at the main fruits: dwindling numbers and pedophilia. - Time, January 27, 2003

I probably sound like some egotist, you know, saying that the Roman Church is wrong, but I believe it is at the moment, since Vatican II. (1990)

(On The Da Vinci Code) I`d love to make a movie that shakes the world and offends people, but I really. Didn`t think it was going to be this one. I think next to The Last Temptation of Christ it`s Tonka Toys. Nobody seemed to get offended by Martin Scorsese`s movie, no one seemed to get offended when Francis Coppola made a movie where he suggested that the mafia and the Vatican were in cahoots. Nobody picketed that. I play a monk who murders people, but it`s no more a comment on monks than it is on people who wear sandals. Or big long brown dresses.

It was the basilica of gossip, the Vatican of inside dope.

It`s a clear statement by the Vatican that gay men are not welcome in seminaries and religious orders,

It`s a clear statement by the Vatican that gay men are not welcome in seminaries and religious orders, ... In Good Company: The Fast Track from the Corporate World to Poverty, Chastity and Obedience.

Vatican II declares the Church... as necessary for salvation.

In the question of homosexuality, the Vatican was rather permissive or lenient, with regard to all these crimes of sexual abuse.

Vatican II was a force that seized the mind of the Roman Catholic Church and carried it across centuries from the 13th to the 20th.

It`s a clear statement by the Vatican that gay men are not welcome in seminaries and religious orders, ... In Good Company: The Fast Track from the Corporate World to Poverty, Chastity and Obedience.

It`s a clear statement by the Vatican that gay men are not welcome in seminaries and religious orders,

For Catholics before Vatican II, the land of the free was pre-eminently the land of Sister Says-except, of course, for Sister, for whom it was the land of Father Says.