Pope tells university students to ‘renew art and culture’

Vatican City, Mar 20, 2005 / 22:00 pm

In a message read by Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, substitute for the Secretariat of State today, the Holy Father told participants of the 38th University Congress (UNIV) to “renew the languages of art and culture.”

The theme of this years gathering is "Projecting Culture: the language of music." Also present at today’s meeting, held in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall, was Bishop Javier Echevarria Rodriguez, prelate of the personal prelature of Opus Dei.

Nearly 4,000 students and teachers from more than 200 universities throughout the world gathered today to participate in the formative activities promoted by the prelature of Opus Dei.

"Music, like all artistic languages," wrote the Holy Father in his message, "brings man closer to God. ... Yet at the same time, art can on occasion transmit a conception of man, of love and of happiness that does not correspond to the truth of God's design.”

“For this reason”, he said, “it is necessary to discern clearly."

The Pope highlighted the fact that along with renewing “the languages of art and of culture," young people must have the courage "not to accept forms of behavior and entertainment marked by noise and excess."

Recalling that, "the vocation of the lay faithful is holiness, animating temporal reality in a Christian way," John Paul wrote, "Dear university students and teachers, as St. Josemaria liked to repeat, work and study must be 'a constant prayer for you.”

It has the same loveable words, but a different tune each day. It is very much our mission to transform the prose of this life into poetry, into heroic verse'."

"May Mary Most Holy”, the Pope prayed, “help you to encounter her Son Jesus Christ in the liturgy of this Holy Week and in the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist."