 Vatican
Museum Patrons
Pope Benedict VXI received the Patron
of Arts in the Vatican Museum and greeted the patrons on their pilgrimage
to Rome for the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Vatican
museums.
Below is the Pope's address to the patrons whom received in audience
on June 1 :
Your Eminences,
Your Excellencies,
Dear Friends,
I am pleased to greet the Patrons of
the Arts in the Vatican Museums on the occasion of your pilgrimage
to Rome for the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Vatican
Museums. At the same time, I thank you for your continuing interest,
which is motivated not only by a sense of stewardship for the incomparable
cultural patrimony of the Vatican Museums, but also by a generous
commitment to the Church's evangelizing mission.
In every age Christians have sought
to give expression
to faith's vision of the beauty and order of God's creation, the
nobility of our vocation as men and women made in his image and
likeness, and the promise of a cosmos redeemed and transfigured
by the grace of Christ. The artistic treasures which surround us
are not simply impressive monuments of a distant past. Rather, for
the hundreds of thousands of visitors who contemplate them year
after year, they stand as a perennial witness to the Church's unchanging
faith in the Triune God who, in the memorable phrase of St.Augustine,
is himself "Beauty ever ancient, ever new" ("Confessions,"
X, 27).
Dear friends, may your support of the
Vatican Museums
bear abundant spiritual fruits in your own lives and advance the
Church's mission of bringing all people to the knowledge and love
of Jesus Christ, "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians
1:15), in whose Eternal Spirit all creation is reconciled, restored
and renewed. To you, your families and associates, I cordially impart
my apostolic blessing as a pledge of enduring joy and peace in the
Lord. |
“Jesus’
Baptism”