Is it any surprise

that Pope John Paul began his 1990 encyclical on missionary activity Redemptoris Missio with a tribute to St. Paul?

Bishop Michael Saltarelli

[Paul] was a man whom one could not

come near without going away from him wiser than one came; a fount of knowledge and wisdom ever full...

John Henry Cardinal Newman

Like St Paul,

let us also place our hope and trust "in the grace of God which is with us".

Pope Benedict XVI

In order to understand him

and to benefit from knowing him, one must be inflamed with the same ardor that Paul experienced in all he did; nor should one fear to be stirred up from a calm and static way of life.




Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

The Christian is another Christ,

and this is what St. Paul says of himself: I live now not with my own life, but with the life of Christ who lives in me.

Bl. James Alberione

Paul held high

not academic decorations, but the naked arms of a Cross.

Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

Nothing in nature

checked or discouraged him, nor anything that man could do. It might be said that he was genuinely at ease amid difficulties, tension and conflict. His worst trials furnish opportunities for greater accomplishments. He speaks of them with an unfeigned serenity.

Henri Daniel-Rops

He whom for a lifetime I had feared

and disliked as being alien, aloof, a distant person, was, as I last discovered, the lovingest, dearest man in the world. In a revleation as sudden as his own divine experience near Damascus, [Paul] has become my dear, warmhearted friend.

E. Boyd Barrett

I do not say that at this day

we have many specimens or much opportunity of such high deeds and attainments, but in our degree we certainly may follow St. Paul in them.


John Henry Cardinal Newman

Paul interests the literati and the theologian,

the artist and the sociologist. He is still all things to all men in the most amazing manner.


Igino Giordani

Christ is my life,

Christ is my thought;
Christ is my desire;
Christ is my love, my wish, my speech,
my very actions are Christ.
I wish nothing else,
I delight in nothing else,
I do nothing else,
I think of nothing else,
I speak of nothing other than Christ.

Cornelius A'Lapide, SJ: Gal.2:20; Phil. 3:8; Gal. 6:14; Rm. 14:8

St. Paul is, if ever a man was,

a churchman. St. Peter, curiously, doesn't use the word "church" in his epistles at all; St. Paul uses it more than sixty times.


Msgr. Ronald Knox

Grace already flourished deeply

in him and he constantly tended his soul to fit it for the growth and development of grace.

St. John Chrysostom

A being of contrasts,

at once tender and demanding, violent and sensitive, energetic and meditative: we may imagine at what cost, through what efforts of self-domination, he was able to achieve unity within himself.


Henri Daniel-Rops

His presence inspired

resolution, confidence and zeal, as one who was the keeper of secrets and the revealer of the whole counsel of God.


John Henry Cardinal Newman

His departure was quite different from his coming to Damascus.

Before he had come as a ruler, led on by irrational passions; now he was the vanquished one, but free with the freedom of God.



Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

May all who feel called by God

to the apostolic life imitate Paul, so that by obeying promptly and courageously, they will cooperate with God who calls them.

Cornelius A' Lapide, SJ

We know from Paul's life

that at the heart of conversion is a surrender ot the love of the Risen Lord.


Bishop Michael Saltarelli

[Paul] could have answered ten thousand questions

on theological subjects, on all those points about which the Church has disputed since his time, and which we now long to ask him.


John Henry Cardinal Newman

The advice that St Paul gave

to the Thessalonians can still inspire the behaviour of Christians in the context of ecumenical relations today. Above all he said: "Be at peace among yourselves."

Pope Benedict XVI

While before his conversion

Paul had run ever farther away from Christ, after it he does nothing but run ever toward him.


Giuseppe Ricciotti
Paul the Apostle

Paul was a man of great talent,

ardent disposition, and flaming nature, as we gather from the Acts of the Apostles. When grace came to inform his nature, he became the chosen instrument of God, extraordinarily efficacious.


Cornelius A' Lapide, SJ

This man was that exceedingly rare

literary phenomenon, a natural stylist who was genuinely contemptuous of style. Is it very wrong to picture him listening restlessly to a read-back [by his scribe] and suddenly muttering, "All right, all right. let's get on with it"?

Vincent Mc Corry, SJ

What Paul says

is what he sees, what he experiences in the rending of his soul; and in his eyes, thought counts much more than style.


Henri Daniel-Rops

From the Epistles emerges Paul,

the theologian of the Mystical Body; Paul, the Apostle of the Precious Blood; Paul, the saint commissioned to proclaim the unsearchable riches of the Sacred Heart; Paul, the ambassador of Christ the King, yearning, straining for the restoration of all things in Christ; and finally, Paul, the Doctor of Ecumenism.


Emily Daly, CSJ

All who came in touch

with [Paul] gained a measure of the gifts which God had lodged in him.


John Henry Cardinal Newman

No one can approach St. Paul,

whose soul is a firebrand, without feeling the flame.


Igino Giordani
St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr

"Mysticism" here is simply an attempt

to find a word which evokes (rather than clearly indicating) the distinctive character of Paul's "in Christ," "with Christ," "Christ lives in me"..."


James Dunn
The Theology of Paul the Apostle

By divine intervention,

the relentless persecutor of God's Church suddenly found himself blind and groping in the dark, but henceforth with a great light in his heart, which was to bring him a little later to be an ardent Apostle of the Gospel.

Pope Benedict XVI

With unfaltering hope,

Paul claimed for himself the glory of a heavenly crown.

Cornelius A' Lapide, SJ

Certainly, after Jesus,

he is one of the originals of whom we have the most information. In fact, we possess not only the account that Luke gives in the Acts of the Apostles, but also a group of Letters that have come directly from his hand and which, without intermediaries, reveal his personality and thought.

Pope Benedict XVI