Pope Academy message: The artist is a witness to the beauty of faith

(Vatican Radio) 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.

The artist the Holy Father continues can participate with their own specific and original contribution to the vocation and mission of the Church, especially when, in the different art forms, they are called to create works of art directly related to the experience of faith and worship, and the liturgy of the Church.

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. Listen to this report by Lydia O’Kane