Pope Academy message: The artist is a witness to the beauty of faith
November 22, 2012: Pope Benedict sent a message to the President of the Pontifical
Council for Culture, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, on the occasion of the seventeenth
session of the Pontifical Academy meeting, held Wednesday afternoon in the Great Hall
of the Palace of St. Pius X in the Vatican.
In his message Pope Benedict recalls
a quote from a recent Motu Proprio “The artist, like the Church, is a witness to the
beauty of the faith.” The Pope says: "The beauty of the faith can never be an obstacle
to the creation of artistic beauty, since it is in some ways its lifeblood and the
ultimate horizon. The true artist,” he goes on to say, is the guardian of the beauty
of the world and thanks to his or her unique aesthetic sensitivity and intuition,
can grasp and accept deeper than others the beauty of faith and communicate it to
others.
Pope Benedict concludes his message by inviting artists at the beginning
of this Year of Faith, to ensure that they see their artistic career as a journey
to become whole, in which all dimensions of human life are involved, so they witness
effectively to the beauty of faith in Jesus Christ, the image of the glory of God
that illuminates the history of humanity.