Monday, July 4, 2011

POPE INAUGURATES ART EXHIBITION IN PAUL VI HALL

VATICAN CITY, 4 JUL 2011 (VIS) - This morning in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall, the Holy Father inaugurated an exhibition entitled: "The splendour of truth, the beauty of charity: Homage of sixty artists to Benedict XVI for the sixtieth anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood".

  The idea to hold the exhibition arose from the Pope's meeting with artists in the Sistine Chapel on 21 November 2009. The artists participating in this initiative, most of them Italian, represent different categories: painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, literature, poetry, music, cinema and jewellery design.

  In his address the Holy Father noted that "the Church and artists are meeting and speaking together again, underlining the need for a discussion which wishes to become, and must become, increasingly intense and intricate. The aim of this is to offer the culture (or rather the cultures) of our time an eloquent example of fruitful and effective dialogue aimed at making this world of ours more human and more beautiful".

  "I would like to renew a friendly and impassioned appeal to all artists", he said. "Never separate artistic creativity from truth and charity, never seek beauty distant from truth and charity, but with your genius and creative drive always seek courageously after truth and bear witness to charity. Make the truth shine forth in your works, ensuring that their beauty arouses in the eyes and hearts of the people who admire them the desire and the need to make life, each individual life, more beautiful and true, enriching it with that treasure which never runs out, which makes life a masterpiece and each man an extraordinary artist: charity, love. May the Holy Spirit, architect of all that is beautiful in the world, illuminate you and guide you towards the definitive and ultimate Beauty".

  The Holy Father concluded his remarks by thanking the artists for "bringing into the world a ray of that Beauty which is God".
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