We gathered these comments from an email Randall Terry sent around and from a couple of other sources, including Pope Francis' new wikipedia entry. We have highlighted a document from the 2007 Latin America Bishops Conference well worth referencing in the future.
– In 2007 Cardinal Bergoglio stated, “We aren’t in agreement with the
death penalty,” he said, “but in Argentina we have the death penalty. A
child conceived by the rape of a mentally ill or retarded woman can be
condemned to death.”
In 2007, following Pope Benedict’s meeting with Latin American bishops,
the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America produced a
joint statement, known as the Aparecida Document; it was presented by
Cardinal Bergoglio himself.
Paragraph 436: We hope that legislators, heads of government, and health
professionals, conscious of the dignity of human life and of the
rootedness of the family in our peoples, will defend and protect it from
the abominable crimes of abortion and euthanasia; that is their
responsibility. Hence, in response to government laws and provisions
that are unjust in the light of faith and reason, conscientious
objection should be encouraged. We must adhere to “eucharistic
coherence,” that is, be conscious that they cannot receive holy
communion and at the same time act with deeds or words against the
commandments, particularly when abortion, euthanasia, and other grave
crimes against life and family are encouraged. This responsibility
weighs particularly over legislators, heads of government, and health
professionals.
"We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a church that is wrapped up
in its own world: when a church becomes like this, it grows sick. It is
true that going out on to the street implies the risk of accidents
happening, as they would to any ordinary man or woman. But if the church
stays wrapped up in itself, it will age. And if I had to choose between
a wounded church that goes out on to the streets and a sick, withdrawn
church, I would definitely choose the first one."
"In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don't baptize the
children of single mothers because they weren't conceived in the
sanctity of marriage.
These are today's hypocrites. Those who criticize the church. Those who
separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who,
rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it
into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it's
baptized!"
“Today,” he wrote, “elderly people are discarded when, in reality, they
are the seat of wisdom of the society. The right to life means allowing
people to live and not killing, allowing them to grow, to eat, to be
educated, to be healed, and to be permitted to die with dignity.” –
Cardinal Bergoglio/Pope Francis
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