VATICAN - “Museums can help foster a culture of peace if, retaining their nature as temples of historic memory, they are also places of dialogue and friendship”: Pope Benedict XVI addresses International Conference to mark 500th anniversary of the Vatican Museums

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “The Church has always supported and promoted art in the world considering its language a privileged means for human and spiritual progress … The expansion in time of the Vatican Museums is a demonstration that these finalities have always been present in the Pontiffs’ efforts”. Pope Benedict XVI said this in an address to participants at an International Conference organised to mark the 500th anniversary of the Vatican Museums whom he received in audience on December 16. Expressing appreciation for the Conference on the identity and role of the museum today and its future prospects, the Holy Father said the Vatican Museums “offer an extraordinary opportunity for evangelisation because through the various works on show, they offer visitors eloquent testimony of the continual interweaving of the divine and the human in the life and history of peoples”. The artistic masterpieces and historical testimony which Museums preserve are a “marvellous synthesis of Gospel and culture”.
The function of the museum today has changed considerably, the Pope remarked, it is increasingly "home" for everyone, particularly for the younger generations. “Every opportunity for fostering integration and encounter among individuals and peoples must undoubtedly be encouraged. In this perspective Museums, while keeping in mind changed social conditions, can become places for artistic meditation, links between the past, present and future, crossroads of men and women in various continents, workshops for research and source of cultural and spiritual enrichment.” Dialogue between cultures and religions, the Pope concluded, "cannot but facilitate mutual knowledge and render more fruitful the efforts to build a shared future of progress solidarity and peace for all humanity. Museums can help to spread the culture of peace if, while maintaining their status as temples of historical memory, they also become places of dialogue and friendship among everyone”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 18/12/2006 - Righe 23, parole 327)