Fra Angelico : legacy of a blissful Dominican...

Dominican Father Robert Ombres former Procurator General of his Order is currently based in Oxford, England. His special interests in Roman Catholic canon law, comparative canon law and Church-State relations were recently recognised when he was appointed the 'Raymond of Penyafort Fellow in Canon Law at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford'.
Despite this legal background , while in Rome recently ,Father Ombres did not shy away from speaking to Veronica Scarisbrick about a blissful Dominican from his Order's glorious past . He's Fra Angelico whose feast day the Church remembers each year on the 18th February.
Asked to explain the special charism of this Friar, Father Ombres highlights how one of the many mottos of the Dominican Order: ".. is to give to others the fruit of our contemplation and painting ... first to be communicated and then to be precisely the fruit of contemplation.... because vision is one of the elements of contemplation ..traditionally for us heaven will mean the beatific vision.."

Famously Fra Angelico featured angels in his paintings, among the more well known are his depictions of the Annunciation and of the dancing angels, but the question that comes to mind is why he was known as "Angelico ". Father Ombres tells us there are many reasons for his being known as the angelic painter and then as the angelic friar: " ... because of the purity , the holiness of his own life ... the subject matter ..the extraordinary beauty , purity reflected .."

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