Pope Francis has praised artists as true visionaries who can see, dream and invent. He made the comments Friday as he welcomed 200 artists, filmmakers and writers into the Sistine Chapel to mark the 50th anniversary of the Vatican Museums’ contemporary art collection. Francis acknowledged that some in the crowd sometimes use confrontation to make people think. But he said their aim was to find harmony and beauty. The audience followed similar ones held by previous popes starting with Pope Paul VI who first invited artists into the Sistine Chapel in 1964 in hopes of renewing the friendship between the Church and artists.
I’m not an artist but this seems doomed to be a disappointment. The reason artists in the past “collaborated” with the Church is because that was often the only option to find a patron.
Most of the artists probably were not as aligned with the teachings of the Catholic Church as the Pope apparently hopes they were and that certainly ain’t getting any better in the modern age.