POPE JOHN PAUL II'S LETTER TO ARTISTS

VATICAN CITY, APR 23, 1999 (VIS) - Pope John Paul's Letter to Artists, dated Easter Sunday. April 4, 1999 was released today in Italian, French, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Polish.

The Pope addresses the 16-chapter Letter "To all who are passionately dedicated to the search for new 'epiphanies' of beauty so that through their creative work as artists, they may offer these as gifts to the world."

In the first chapter, "The artist, image of God the Creator," he states that his intention is to continue the Church's 2,000-year old "fruitful dialogue" with artists, a dialogue "rooted in the very essence of both religious experience and artistic creativity. ... The human craftsman mirrors the image of God as Creator. ... The one who creates bestows being itself. ... The craftsman, by contrast, uses something that already exists, to which he gives form and meaning."

The work of artists, the Holy Father continues in "The special vocation of the artist," "becomes a unique disclosure of their own being, of what they are and of how they are what they are. ... the history of art, therefore, is ... also a history of men and women."

Chapter Three addresses "The artistic vocation in the service of beauty," and says: "In a certain sense, beauty is the visible form of the good, just as good is the metaphysical condition of beauty." The Pope points out that "the artist has a special relationship to beauty," and "the obligation not to waste this talent but to develop it, in order to put it at the service of their neighbor, and of humanity as a whole."

He develops this theme of the duty to use talent in the chapter dedicated to "The artist and the common good," writing: "There is therefore an ethic, even a 'spirituality' of artistic service, which contributes in its way to the life and renewal of a people."

In the following chapters, "Art and the mystery of the Word made flesh," and "A fruitful alliance between the Gospel and art," Pope John Paul looks at how, over time, all of Sacred Scripture, and the Incarnation in particular, have "fired the imagination of painters, poets, musicians, playwrights and film-makers." Of the Incarnation, he says: "In becoming man, the Son of God has introduced into human history all the evangelical wealth of the true and the good, and with this He has also unveiled a new dimension of beauty."

Three chapters are then dedicated to the origins of art of Christian inspiration, the Middle Ages and Humanism and the Renaissance. Highlighting what he terms the need of believers "to express the mysteries of faith," the Pope touches upon the various forms this took, including architecture, poetry, sacred music, icons, painting and sculpture. And he says: "Even in the changed climate of more recent centuries, when a part of society seems to have become indifferent to faith, religious art has continued on its way."

In Chapter 10, "Towards a renewed dialogue," John Paul II writes of his hopes for a renewed dialogue between the Church and artists, especially in view of the dawn of "another kind of humanism, marked by the absence of God and often by opposition to God."

In Chapter 11, "In the Spirit of the Second Vatican Council," the Pope stresses the Council Fathers appeal to artists: "This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart."

"The Church needs art," writes the Pope in the next chapter. And in the following one he asks: "Does art need the Church?" He answers the question affirmatively, saying: "How then can we fail to see what a great source of inspiration is offered by that kind of homeland of the soul that is religion?"

The final three chapters are entitled "An appeal to artists," "The Creator Spirit and artistic inspiration" and "The 'Beauty' that saves."

While assuring artists of his esteem, the Holy Father writes: "Mine is an invitation to rediscover the depth of the spiritual and religious dimension which has been typical of art in his noblest form in every age."

Pope John Paul II concludes: "May the beauty which you pass on to generations still to come be such that it will stir them to wonder! Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude."

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