VATICAN

Vatican Museum: Beauty that Unites! 58

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.

Passignano, 1559-1638 , Resurrection, Vatican Museums, Vatican City © Musei Vaticani

Justice exists:
if it does not now triumph or is not completely implemented,
it will when that tremendous day comes when nothing
will pass by without being judged.
The day of the harvest will come and with it
the separation between good and evil will be visible,
tangible and historical.
The bad will receive their punishment; the good, their reward.
This is Gospel teaching.
Good is one thing, evil is another.
They cannot be mixed,
even if it seems that they co-exist,
that they are blended together. (…)
For a Christian, the moral judgement will be s
evere, clear, constant, transparent,
and in a certain sense, uncompromising.
Everything needs to be called by name:
this is good, that is bad
– that is, the conscience should never be weakened and altered,
or become indifferent or emotionless
because it is not right that the criteria of good and bad
be applied indiscriminately to the social realities in which we are immersed.