MERCY TOURS

                                             Your Catholic pilgrimage resource

                                             A Spiritual and Cultural experience

                               The Vatican Museums

A visit to the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel with Michelangelo’s Last Judgment is a highlight of our spiritual pilgrimage to the Eternal City.  The general term “Vatican Museums” covers an astounding 7 kilometers of exhibition space.  The Museums contain vast amounts of paintings, sculptures, tapestries, manuscripts and much more.

The frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo at two different periods of his artistic life (1508-1512 and 1536-1541) and for two different popes complete the paintings on the lower section of the walls which were done by other painters. They represent the continuity of Old and New Testament theology. The focal point of the vault is the Creation of Man, in which God the Father, with a touch of his hand, instills life and soul into Man, still free of sin and depicted in his perfect human form. But in the Last Judgment (on the end wall), Michelangelo depicts the drama of humanity now aware of sin and of the instruments necessary for salvation: faith and the Church. It also demonstrates the inner turmoil of the artist, then 61 years old.

“Religious art expresses the faith of the Church, the theological vision of the Christian community. It is prayer, a song of praise, a theology in colours, a symphonic expression, and a prism of a thousand lights, of the Word who became man and dwelt among us, thus making himself visible and tangible. Religious art is catechesis because it is a radiation of God in Christ…it immerses people in beauty, which is Truth. Art needs to be rediscovered as an instrument through which the spiritual reality of the world and the truth that this contains can be rendered present. In this sense, the beauty of Christian art is a hymn of joy and hope.  Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the heart of humanity and is a positive consequence which outlives time, unites one generation to the next and helps them to communicate in an atmosphere of admiration.” (Quotes from The Official Vatican Guide for the Jubilee Year 2000)