Without God man neither knows which way to go, nor even understands who he is… One of the deepest forms of poverty a person can experience is isolation… Poverty is often produced by a rejection of God’s love, by man’s basic and tragic tendency to close in on himself, thinking himself to be self-sufficient or merely an insignificant and ephemeral fact, a “stranger” in a random universe…The human being develops when … his soul comes to know itself and the truths that God has implanted deep within, when he enters into dialogue with himself and his Creator… It is not by isolation that man establishes his worth, but by placing himself in relation with others and with God.
Pope Benedict XVI