Pope Francis quotes Dostoyevski: 'Beauty will save the world'

Virgin salus populi romani at St Mary Maggiori

'Beauty will save the world'. Pope Francis quoted this famous line from the celebrated Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in his message to the Moscow Synodal Choir, who gave a concert in the Papal Basilica of St Mary Major on Sunday evening, 3 November.

“Music, painting, sculpture, architecture is simply the beauty that unites us to grow in the faith which is celebrated, in prophetic hope and in witnessed charity”, he said.

In a message to the choir, read in the Basilica by Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect Congregation for the Eastern Churches, Pope Francis said: "“Looking back over the history of Christianity which spans thousands of years, we may observe that in spite of the separate historical events and different ways of understanding revelation, a deep unity has been maintained in art” - a unity fostered by frequent meetings of study and reflection together on our common sources.

In the Church “art in all its forms, does not exist only for simple aesthetic enjoyment but because, through art the Church in every moment of history and in every culture, explains and interprets revelation for the good of the People of God. Art in the Church fundamentally exists for evangelization”.

“Today the Church can and must breathe with both lungs, the eastern lung and the western lung. Where we still do not completely do this, according to the measure of unity asked for by Jesus in the prayer to the Father, we can do this in many other ways”.

One of these ways, the message concluded, is through the “great patrimony of art and culture, which the various traditions have produced abundantly in the lives of the People of God”.

Following the Angelus on Sunday, the Holy Father briefly met the 50 members of the Choir in his residence in Casa Santa Marta.

Source: VIS/OR