Pope Benedict XVI on Architecture
Quotes on architecture by Pope Benedict XVI.
Seeking the Light of True Faith: Homily from the Reopening of the Pauline Chapel
Today, a few days after the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul and the conclusion of the Pauline Year, my wish to reopen the Pauline Chapel for worship is fulfilled. We have taken part in solemn celebrations in honour of the two Apostles in the Papal Basilicas of Saint Paul and Saint Peter. This evening, to complete them, as it were, we gather in the heart of the Apostolic Palace, in the Chapel desired by Pope Paul III and designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, the place of prayer reserved for the Pope and the Pontifical Family. The paintings and decorations adorning this chapel particularly the two large frescoes by Michelangelo Buonarotti which were the last works of his long life are especially effective in encouraging meditation and prayer. They depict the conversion of Paul and the crucifixion of Peter.
Editorial: Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam et Beatae Mariae Virginis
Unemployment is at a high level, and the economy is in recession. In order to give thousands of people jobs, the state embarks on some major infrastructure projects designed by an award winning architect. A parable for how the U.S. government can get the economy back on track? No, the story of how Pope Alexander VII and Gianlorenzo Bernini built Piazza San Pietro, the greatest public piazza in the world.
Editorial: Pulchritudo Tam Antiqua et Tam Nova
Part of the history of art and architecture is the revivification of elements found in the past. Sometimes this is a matter of continuity, while at other times the elements are referenced in order to associate the new work with a building or a historical period. The twentieth-century Liturgical Movement sought a return to the liturgy of antiquity and viewed developments dating from the medieval period or Counter-Reformation as unnecessary accretions or decadences.
The Luminosity of Peruvian Churches
In November of 2008 I went up into the mountains of Peru for a month. There I saw over fifteen towns and villages, traveling by a combination of train, bus, minivan, station wagon, motorcycle, and my own two feet. Much of my transportation was older than I am, and had a disturbing tendency to stall. Yet even as I watched the miles go by, it seemed as if time as well were slipping by. In those areas of desperate poverty, I saw houses built from adobe mud without windows or doors, streets with no paving, and people pulling plows in fields. Men with typewriters set up business in the streets to produce letters, and knife sharpeners wandered with their wheels on their backs. At the center of almost every village, and often enough the village life, was a Catholic church, usually from the colonial period, with its original altarpieces, pulpits, and decorations. As the weeks went by, I noticed extraordinary similarities between them on several levels. While at first glance, they seemed similar to Spanish churches, I quickly saw I was wrong, and that these were Andean churches: particular products of convulsive shifts in Christianity, architecture, global balances of power, and Andean building traditions and religious customs.
Depicting the Whole Christ: Hans Urs von Balthasar and Sacred Architecture
The theological work of twentieth-century theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar has only recently begun to take its proper place in Catholic theology. In his lifetime he certainly took a back seat to contemporaries such as Karl Rahner, Yves Congar, and those men who were known as the theological architects of Vatican II. Balthasar never attended Vatican II, unlike so many of his fellow theologians and friends. This absence, combined with the difficulty inherent in classifying such a diverse corpus as his, has slowed his acceptance as a theological authority in the Church. But for the past thirty years—since the election of John Paul II to the Holy See—Balthasar’s star has risen as one of the great theologians after Trent, a status that the election of Balthasar’s close personal friend and theological sympathizer Joseph Ratzinger to the Chair of Saint Peter seemingly stamped with an imprimatur of the highest rank. At Balthasar’s funeral, Henri Cardinal de Lubac described him as “probably the most cultured man in the Western world.” Indeed, when one looks at the cultural topics that Balthasar treated, Cardinal de Lubac’s statement becomes hard to refute: Balthasar wrote his doctoral dissertation on German literature; his first major work was on music; he was one of the foremost patristic scholars of his time; and, thanks to his father’s practice of church architecture in Switzerland, he loved the visual arts and architecture.
