"Tue beauty linked to truth" Pope tells Pontifical Academies

(Nov.26,2008):- "The search for beauty without truth and goodness can drive young people to fly toward artificial paradises that simply hide interior emptiness," said Pope Benedict XVI. The Pontiff affirmed this in a message sent to the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, and directed to the members of the pontifical academies who are participating in a conference on "The Universality of Beauty: a Comparison Between Aesthetics and Ethics."
There is currently a dramatic separation between the search for beauty as an appearance to be sought at all costs, and the search]for truth and the goodness of actions,"the Pope wrote. He cautioned that this separation, transforms beauty into mere aestheticism, and above all for youth, into a path that leads to the ephemeral, or even a flight toward artificial paradises. Beauty, he continued, has always been considered a path to arrive to God.
The Pope told the academics and artists that their precise task and mission is to stir up awe
and desire for an authentic reflection of divine beauty. Man of today, he continued, still has "a desire and nostalgia for an authentic beauty, not superficial and ephemeral." Pope Benedict asked artists to promote in contemporary cultures a new Christian humanism, which knows how to walk with clarity and decision the path of authentic beauty."