Vatican Museums

On Monday 28 October the exhibition held in the Vatican Museums, dedicated to earth’s green heart – Mater Amazonia. The deep breath of the world – will be opened to the public.
The exhibition is the first to be held in the renovated spaces of the Vatican Ethnological Museum Anima Mundi, which last week had the honour of being inaugurated in its new form by Pope Francis himself. “I like to think that what we are inaugurating today is not simply a museum according to the traditional concept”, declared the Holy Father on the occasion. “Indeed, I have found appropriate the name that has been chosen for this collection, so evocative: Anima mundi, the soul of the world. I think that the Vatican Museums are called increasingly to become a living “home”, inhabited by and open to all, with the doors wide open to populations from all over the world”.

It is therefore not by chance that Mater Amazonia opens its doors precisely during the days of the Synod dedicated to this complex region, just as it is not a coincidence that it is housed in a museum whose mission has always been that of welcoming the artistic and cultural works of non-European peoples.

Visitors will be able to follow a true cognitive itinerary of the Amazon. A multimedia, immersive and emotional experience in three “environments” of daily life: the forest, the river, and the maloca (the community house). More than one hundred objects - alternating with films and photographs - will be on display to narrate not only the relationship between man and the environment, but also the encounter of the Christian faith with the indigenous peoples, and how they have assimilated the Gospel in many aspects of daily life. The exhibition therefore aims to stimulate profound reflection on some of the overall themes dear to the Pope and to the native peoples of those lands: concern for nature, justice for the poor, and commitment to society. A powerful and original way to contribute, in accordance with the intentions of the special Synodal assembly convoked by the Pope, to raising awareness in all people of good will in the face of the serious problems that affect this part of the world, and elsewhere.