Vatican City, 4 May 2015 (VIS) – This
morning, with the commemoration in the Senate, there began the events
with which all Italy will celebrate the birth of Dante Alighieri
(Florence 1265 – Ravenna 1321), the author of “The Divine
Comedy”. The Pope participated with a message to Cardinal
Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture,
also present at the ceremony presided over by the President of the
Republic Sergio Mattarella, and attended by the minister for Culture
Dario Franceschini and the actor Roberto Benigni, who read Canto
XXXIII of Paradise.
“With this message, I wish to join
the chorus of those who consider Dante Alighieri to be an artist of
the highest universal value, who still has much to say and to offer,
through his immortal works, to those who wish to follow the route of
true knowledge, of the authentic discovery of the self, of the world,
of the profound and transcendent meaning of existence”, writes the
Pope.
He notes that many of his predecessors
celebrated the anniversaries of Dante with documents of great
importance, in which the figure of Dante Alighieri is presented
precisely for his continuing relevance and his greatness, not only
artistic but also theological and cultural. He cites, among these,
Benedict XV who dedicated his encyclical “In praeclara summorum”
(1921) to Dante on the sixth centenary of his death, affirming and
highlighting “the intimate union of Dante with the See of Peter”.
Blessed Paul VI dedicated the Apostolic Letter “Altissimi cantus”,
at the closure of Vatican Council II, to Dante, affirming that “Dante
is ours! Ours, as in of Catholic faith”. St. John Paul II and
Benedict XVI also often referred to the works of the great poet and
mentioned him on numerous occasions. Pope Francis added that in his
first encyclical, “Lumen Fidei”, he drew upon the “immense
patrimony of images, symbols and values that constitute Dante's
work”.
On the eve of the extraordinary Jubilee
of Mercy, the Holy Father expresses his hope that during this year
the figure of Dante and his work will also accompany us on this
personal and community path. “Indeed”, he remarks, “the Comedy
may be read as a great itinerary, or rather as a true pilgrimage,
both personal and interior, and communal, ecclesial, social and
historical. It represents the paradigm of every authentic journey in
which humanity is called upon to leave what Dante defines as 'the
threshing-floor that makes us so ferocious' to attain a new
condition, marked by harmony, peace and happiness. And this is the
horizon of every true humanism”.
“Dante is, therefore, a prophet of
hope, herald of the possibility of redemption, of liberation, of the
profound transformation of every man and woman, of all humanity. He
continues to invite us to rediscover the lost or obscured meaning of
our human path and to hope to see again the shining horizon on which
there shines in all its fullness the dignity of the human person.
Honouring Dante Alighieri, as Paul VI has already invited us to do,
we are able to enrich ourselves with his experience in order to cross
the many dark forests still scattered on our earth and to happily
complete our pilgrimage in history, to reach the destination dreamed
of and wished for by every man: 'the love that moves the sun in
heaven and all the stars'”.
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