Faith Quote by Claudio Hummes

A cardinal is doing something deceptively radical here: drawing a hard line in an institution famous for blurring them. When Claudio Hummes says the church is "inserted and active" in society and history, he refuses the convenient fantasy of a purely spiritual church floating above politics. Catholicism has bodies, buildings, budgets, and voices; it shapes law, education, and moral language whether it admits it or not. The first clause concedes that reality. The second clause tries to domesticate it.

"Does not exist in order to exercise political power" is less a description than a defensive maneuver aimed at two audiences at once. To secular critics, its a pledge: we are not here to run your state. To Catholics wary of clerical overreach, its a reminder: the church's legitimacy collapses when it looks like just another party machine. That tension has sharp historical teeth in Latin America, where bishops have been pulled between alignment with governments, opposition movements, and liberation theology's insistence that faith has consequences for poverty and violence.

The phrasing also smuggles in a claim about moral authority. Hummes doesn't renounce influence; he renounces governance. "Active" but not ruling is a bid to keep the church in the public square while refusing accountability that comes with formal power. Its a careful attempt to reframe Catholic engagement as witness rather than domination: speak, serve, criticize, mobilize conscience - but don't pretend the Gospel is a constitution. In an era when religion is often measured by its electoral muscle, the line reads like an effort to rescue the church from its own temptations.