VATICAN CITY, MAY 26, 2000 (VIS) - Fifty members of the International Union of the Institutes of Archeology, History and Art History in Rome were greeted today by the Pope who underlined their mission of "serving history and art by developing the numerous witnesses that Rome possesses of western civilization, of Christian culture and of the life of the Church."
He observed that they have "placed at the disposition of researchers and students a bibliographic data bank, set up under the auspices of the Roman Union of Scientific Libraries, in relation with the Vatican Apostolic Library. I am pleased about this remarkable work tool, as well as about the scholarships which you offer young researchers."
The Holy Father, addressing the group in French, said that "the Church knows the irreplaceable role of cultural patrimony for the promotion of an authentic humanism and lasting peace among nations. ... The spread of artistic and historic culture throughout all levels of society gives the men and women of our time the means to rediscover their roots and to draw from them the cultural and spiritual elements needed to build their personal and community life."
He remarked that "all men and all societies need a culture which opens itself to a healthy anthropological process, to moral and spiritual life. ... Art invites us to cultivate the beauty of existence, in fully living its moral exigencies, and in tirelessly searching for the truth. ... Cultural patrimony has precisely this function of opening man to the meaning of the mystery and the revelation of the absolute, for they are bearers of a message."
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