Pope Francis meets artists in the Sistine Chapel
Fifty years of the Vatican Museums Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art
On Friday 23 June, on the 50th anniversary of the Vatican Museums Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, inaugurated in its first layout by Saint Paul VI on 23 June 1973, Pope Francis met and gathered in the Sistine Chapel over 200 artists, including architects, musicians, literary figures, singers, filmmakers, painters and sculptors.
Almost sixty years after the historic “Mass for artists”, strongly desired and celebrated in the Sistine Chapel by the same Pope Montini on 7 May 1964, and thirteen years after Pope Benedict XVI’s solemn meeting with the artists, again in the Sistine Chapel, on 21 November 2009, the “preachers of Beauty” have once again come together with a Pontiff under the vaults of the Cappella Magna to honour and reaffirm the centuries-old alliance between the Church and the Arts. Indeed, Pope Francis emphasized that artists are "allies of God's dream! Eyes that look and dream”.