He Pope Francisco has gathered today in the marvelous setting of the Sistine Chapel with close to 200 artists from all over the world, whom he has asked not to forget the poor because they too “need art and beauty” and to “interpret their silent cry”.
“Before saying goodbye, I still have one thing to say, which is close to my heart. I would like to ask you not to forget the poor, who are the favorites of Christ, in all the ways in which one is poor today. Even the poor they need art and beauty”, Francisco told the writers, painters, singers and other artists who also come from Spain, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, among others.
Francis recalled that “some experience very harsh forms of deprivation of life and that is why they need it more. Normally they don’t have a voice to make themselves heard” and then he asked them to “interpret their silent cry”. “I wish that your works be worthy of the men and women of this earth, and that they give glory to God, who is the Father of all who everyone is looking for, even through art”, he concluded and then greeted those present one by one, just a few days after being discharged from hospital for an abdominal hernia operation.
In his long speech, the Pope also invited them to “flee from the suggestive power of that presumed artificial and superficial beauty that is spread today and is often an accomplice to the economic mechanisms that generate inequalities” and that “is a false cosmetic beauty , a make-up that hides instead of revealing”. He has thanked the artists for being “also sentinels of the true religious sense, sometimes trivialized or commercialized”.
“In that of being clairvoyants, sentinels, critical consciences, I feel you allies for so many things that are close to my heart, such as the defense of human life, the social justice of the least, the care of our common home, all of us feeling like brothers”, he points out.