I don't know if Pope Benedict watches TEDTalks online, but if you do, I've got news for you Benedict I carry condoms all the time and I never get laid.

Now that was the advice that St. Benedict gave his rather startled followers in the fifth century.

Francis predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, began to turn the Church s attention toward the need for environmental sustainability. Francis has taken this process much further.

Cardinal Sodano (Holy See) (spoke in French) I have the honour of conveying the cordial greetings of Pope Benedict XVI, to the Co Chairpersons and to the heads of State or Government gathered here.

He also made 80 saints, compared to a prior total of 165. Pope Benedict XVI s (2005 2013) large number of saints (44) reflects mainly the large stock of beatified people left behind by John Paul II.

As part of this process, Benedict XVI dramatically shortened the number of years that blessed persons had to wait to graduate from beatification to sainthood. For example, John Paul II became a blessed person a mere six years after his death.

Our brains need to create a shared sense of self, an imagined community, as the political scientist Benedict Anderson put it, on whose behalf collective decisions are made. This community is a person that has a past and a future that transcend us as individuals.

Despite the recent return to Russia of the icon of Our Lady of Kazan that once hung in John Paul s bedroom, relations between the Vatican and the Patriarchate remain strained. So Putin, who usually seems omnipotent, remains wary of issuing an invitation to Pope Benedict.

Its leading candidate for the presidential nomination, John Kerry, talks about how Benedict Arnold CEO's betray America by outsourcing jobs. Kerry's remaining competitor, John Edwards, talks about how the gap on trade between him and Kerry is wide and deep with Kerry on the free trade side.

Pope Benedict, being from Germany, a predominantly Protestant country, does not carry the weight of this bitter history. Perhaps this is one reason why Alexi responded positively to Benedict s first speech urging reconciliation, saying that he hopes that this will improve Orthodox Catholic relations on the post Soviet territory.

Demolition of Palestinian houses and Israeli provocations in East Jerusalem highlight the need to confront this issue without delay. The focus of Pope Benedict XVI s visit to the Middle East was Jerusalem s importance to Christians, Muslims, and Jews, so that attempts to Judaize the Holy City must stop immediately.

Before Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he gave an interview in which he deplored the industrial use of creatures such as hens living so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds. Unfortunately, right now, tens of billions of chickens are being forced to live this way indeed, mankind s realm is full of unnecessarily suffering animals.

The recent meeting in the Vatican of the Custodian of The Holy Places, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and Pope Benedict XVI was a seminal event, particularly as it comes at a time when radical Muslims are decrying the role of crusaders in Middle East politics. It was also the clearest sign yet of a rising Holy Alliance among the world s conservative leaders.

Every currency union chooses symbols of common cultural values for its coins and notes, and these symbols become part of the sense of shared identity. We see the human faces on the notes so often that they come to seem like family, creating what the political scientist Benedict Anderson called the imagined community that underlies and sustains a sense of nationhood.

ROME Once again, the reputation of Pope Pius XII is under scrutiny and attack. Indeed, so searching are the questions and so inflamed are discussions about the Roman Catholic Church s pontiff during World War II that the current pope, Benedict XVI, recently announced that he may postpone Pius s beatification until the Vatican s archives for the war years are opened and examined.

LONDON The recent meeting in the Vatican of the Custodian of The Holy Places, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and Pope Benedict XVI was a seminal event, particularly as it comes at a time when radical Muslims are decrying the role of crusaders in Middle East politics. It was also the clearest sign yet of a rising Holy Alliance among the world s conservative leaders.

Recently, at a gathering of hundreds of thousands of young people in Cologne, Germany, Pope Benedict XVI echoed the sentiments of young people around the world when he said, We are concerned for the state of the world and we are asking, where do I find standards to live by and what are the criteria that govern responsible cooperation in building the present and the future of our world? '