Vatican Museum: Beauty that Unites! 53

Beauty creates communion. It unites onlookers from a distance, uniting past, present and future. Pope Francis has recalled this on a number of occasions. The Church has always translated the universality of the Good News into the language of art. From this premise, this dramatic moment in history characterized by uncertainty and isolation, gives rise to this initiative which is a partnership between the Vatican Museum and Vatican News: Masterpieces from the Vatican Collection accompanied by comments from the words of the Popes.

Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520); The Mass at Bolsena; fresco; 1512-14; Vatican Museums; Vatican Apostolic Palace; Raphael Rooms, Room of Heliodorus, © Musei Vaticani

What today’s world perhaps needs the most is
that Christians lift up with humble courage
the prophetic voice of their hope.
It will be precisely from an intense
and conscious Eucharistic life
that their witness will derive
its intense transparency and
its force of conviction which are necessary
to break through to the human heart.

(Pope Paul VI, Homily on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 28 May 1978)