Giacomo Biffi

Catholic cardinal (1928–2015)

Giacomo Biffi (13 June 1928–11 July 2015) was an Italian Cardinal of the Catholic Church who served as the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Bologna.

Giacomo Biffi

Quotes

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  • [Solov'ëv was] Passionate defender of man and allergic to all philanthropy; tireless apostle of peace and opponent of pacifism; proponent of unity among Christians and critic of all irenicism; in love with nature and far removed from today's ecological infatuations: in a word, friend of truth and enemy of ideology. It is precisely guides like him that we sorely need today.
  • Christmas is not only the telling of what has been; it is perception of what is. It is not only perception of a circumscribed and datable episode; it is savoring of a perennial and universally effective actuality; it is exultation over a richness that is given to us. The annotation that Christmas is after all a birthday would be enough to convince us of this. Now birthdays are for living men. For the dead-even if they are great and very famous-at most, centenarians are remembered. So to celebrate Christmas every year is to express the certainty that Jesus of Nazareth-that child born two thousand years ago in a stable-is a living person: he is really, truly, physically alive; he is still the principle of salvation for us; he is still the center of our every existence and of the whole of history.
    • Giacomo Biffi, La meraviglia dell'evento cristiano, pp. 269-270; as quoted inIl settimanale di Padre Pio, anno V, n. 51, p. 19.
  • Christianity has an admirable example of the natural union between faith and freedom in Dante Alighieri. Precisely his undoubted adherence to Catholic truth allows and illuminates his perfect autonomy of judgement, free from any fear or human conditioning. Dante is not afraid to criticize the work of the popes and their operational choices, to the point of placing several of them in the depths of hell. But in him "the reverence of the supreme keys" never diminishes and never diminishes in the slightest (Inf. XIX, 101). When it comes to expressing reservations or criticisms that he considers due, there are no discounts neither for lay people, nor for ecclesiastics, nor for monarchs, nor for ordinary citizens... all of whom are required, without exception, to abide by the law evangelical.
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