VATICAN CITY — Evangelizing through culture is a challenge for the Church, especially in societies where faith is seen as “something alien,” participants said at a Vatican-sponsored discussion on faith and culture.
“The Church needs to have a good relationship with the arts,” said Stephen Callaghan, a playwright and director of the Archdiocese of Glasgow Arts Project during a Feb. 17 meeting of representatives of Catholic cultural centers from around the world at the Vatican.
The gathering, held at the Vatican as part of the Jubilee of Artists and the World of Culture Feb. 15-18, brought together representatives of Catholic cultural centers and Church bodies dedicated to culture.
“The Church is not a moral watchdog on the arts — it is the custodian of truth, beauty and goodness, and it is therefore of the utmost importance in restoring hope,” he said.
Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, hosted the meeting on the theme, “Artisans of Hope,” and underscored the urgency of overcoming the “divorce between culture and faith” identified in the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (“Gaudium et Spes”).
A homily that Pope Francis prepared for the Jubilee Mass Feb. 16 in St. Peter’s Basilica said that artists and cultural figures must be “custodians of the beatitudes,” embracing their vocation to create beauty, reveal truth and inspire hope in a troubled world.
“Art is not a luxury, but a necessity of the spirit. It is not an escape, but a responsibility, an invitation to action, a call, a cry,” the homily said.
Cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça celebrated the Mass with artists from more than 100 countries and read the pope’s homily during the liturgy.
“To instruct in beauty is to instruct in hope, and hope is never separated from the drama of existence — it crosses the daily struggle, the fatigue of living, the challenges of our time,” the homily said.
Pope Francis was unable to attend the Mass because he was hospitalized for treatment of a respiratory tract infection. He had also missed the audience he planned with artists and other Jubilee pilgrims Feb. 15.
