Pope: Merciful Church Must Embrace 'Grammar Of Simplicity'

Some words from Pope Francis' final remarks in Rio:

"At times we lose people because they don't understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people . . . Without the grammar of simplicity, the church loses the very conditions which make it possible to fish for God in the deep waters of his mystery."

"Perhaps the church appeared too weak, perhaps too distant from their needs, perhaps too poor to respond to their concerns, perhaps too cold, perhaps too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its own rigid formulas . . . Perhaps the world seems to have made the church a relic of the past, unfit for new questions. Perhaps the church could speak to people in their infancy but not to those come of age."

"We need a church capable of rediscovering the maternal womb of mercy . . . Without mercy, we have little chance nowadays of becoming part of a world of 'wounded' persons in need of understanding, forgiveness and love."