Artists, like prophets, must share truth for a better world, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Under Michelangelo’s frescoed ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, Pope Francis told more than 200 musicians, writers, poets and other artists to be like prophets, pursuing true beauty and using their art to shake up the societies where they live.

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Artists and prophets “can see things both in depth and from afar” while “peering into the horizon and discerning deeper realities,” he said June 23.

“In doing so, you are called to reject the allure of that artificial, superficial beauty so popular today and often complicit with economic mechanisms that generate inequality.”

The audience with an international group of artists marked 50 years since St. Paul VI inaugurated the modern and contemporary art collection in the Vatican Museums by celebrating Mass in the Sistine Chapel with artists from around the world.

Pope Francis told the artists to distance themselves from depicting a “cosmetic” form of beauty “that conceals rather than reveals” and to instead create art that “strives to act as a conscience critical of society, unmasking truisms.”