Links
- Prepare yourself with this guide
- Download our Packing List
- Download our Choir Book
- Learn our Mass Songs
Rome
- Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls
- Basilica of St. Peter in Vatican
- Basilica of St. Mary Major
- Basilica of St. John Lateran, Baptistery, Scala Sancta
- Colosseum & Trevi Fountain
Assisi
Lisbon
Fatima
Loyola
Lourdes
Paris
“I did once say that to me art and the Saints are the greatest apologetic for our faith. The arguments contributed by reason are unquestionably important and indispensable, but then there is always dissent somewhere. On the other hand, if we look at the Saints, this great luminous trail on which God passed through history, we see that there truly is a force of good which resists the millennia; there truly is the light of light. Likewise, if we contemplate the beauties created by faith, they are simply, I would say, the living proof of faith. If I look at this beautiful cathedral - it is a living proclamation! … All the great works of art, cathedrals - the Gothic cathedrals and the splendid Baroque churches - they are all a luminous sign of God and therefore truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God. … I think the great music born in the Church makes the truth of our faith audible and perceivable: from Gregorian chant to the music of the cathedrals, to Palestrina and his epoch, to Bach and hence to Mozart and Bruckner and so forth. In listening to all these works - the Passions of Bach, his Mass in B flat, and the great spiritual compositions of 16th-century polyphony, of the Viennese School, of all music, even that of minor composers - we suddenly understand: it is true! Wherever such things are born, the Truth is there. Without an intuition that discovers the true creative centre of the world such beauty cannot be born. … I believe that in a certain way this is proof of the truth of Christianity: heart and reason encounter one another, beauty and truth converge, and the more that we ourselves succeed in living in the beauty of truth, the more that faith will be able to return to being creative in our time too, and to express itself in a convincing form of art.”[1]
— Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI, Meeting with the Clergy of the Diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone (August 6, 2008).