Religious quotes and news – March 8, 2026
Snippets of religious statements and highlights of events from around the world
Transfiguration foreshadows Easter
In his Angelus address last Sunday Pope Leo spoke about the Transfiguration:
“The Transfiguration foreshadows the light of Easter: an event of death and resurrection, of darkness and new light that Christ radiates on all bodies scourged by violence, crucified by pain, or abandoned in misery. Indeed, while evil reduces our flesh to a commodity or an anonymous mass, this same flesh shines with the glory of God.
“The Redeemer thus transfigures the wounds of history, enlightening our minds and hearts: his revelation is a gift of salvation. Does this captivate us? Do we see the true face of God with a gaze of wonder and love?
“The Father’s reply to the despair of atheism is the gift of his son, the saviour; the Holy Spirit redeems us from the loneliness of agnosticism.”
Man without the supernatural
In a meeting with seminarians from four Spanish dioceses, Pope Leo commented on a quotation from G. K. Chesterton’s 1905 work Heretics: “Take away the supernatural, and what remains is the unnatural”. Pope Leo said: “Man is not made to live closed in on himself, but in a living relationship with God. When that relationship is obscured or weakened, life begins to fall into disorder from within. The unnatural is not only the scandalous; it is enough to live without God in daily life.
“A believing outlook on reality needs to be translated every day into concrete choices in life; otherwise, even intrinsically good practices, such as study, prayer, community life, can become empty and distorted, becoming mere fulfilment. A simple and proven way to safeguard this view is to practice the presence of God.”
Pope’s prayer intention for March
The pope’s March 2026 prayer intention is “let us pray that nations move toward effective disarmament, particularly nuclear disarmament, and that world leaders choose the path of dialogue and diplomacy instead of violence”.
The distribution of the pope’s prayer intention is the responsibility of the Worldwide Prayer Network.
(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)