‘The World Needs Artists’: Looking Back on Pope Francis, Advocate of the Arts

News Pope Francis Goes to Prison in Venice Sam Gaskin

The spiritual leader to over a billion people who encouraged artists to address social and ecological issues and ‘fight the rejection of the other’ has died.

Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis was noted for opening the church’s doors to the poor and LGBTQ+ community and for appreciation of art as a social force.

Pope Francis, history’s first Latin American leader of the Catholic Church, who stood out from predecessors for his ardent advocacy for inclusion, died on Monday at the age of 88.

‘The world needs artists,’ he said upon visiting the Venice Biennale last year, becoming the first Pope to step inside the Vatican’s Holy See Pavilion and citing artists like Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois, and Sister Mary Corita Kent as teachers of the human condition.

A critic of capitalism, Pope Francis explained during the same visit that art is important as it enables us to ‘dare to be gazed at and to gaze at ourselves’.

‘Art educates us to a gaze that is not possessive, not objectifying, but also not indifferent or superficial,’ he said.

This support extended to provocative works by artists like Andres Serrano, whose 1987 Immersion (Piss Christ), the image of a small crucifix immersed in urine, generated outrage that saw funding cuts to the National Endowment of the Arts, which supported its production.

Pope Francis supported confrontational and provocative art, saying such works offer a mirror to the world that ultimately leads to greater harmony and beauty.

In 2023, he blessed Serrano at the Sistine Chapel and spoke to over 200 creatives, including high-profile artists like Anish Kapoor and Joana Vasconcelos.

He asked his audience to remember the poor, who have ‘need for art and beauty’ yet often ‘no voice to make themselves heard’.

Despite an austerity and minimalism mannered after his namesake Saint Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis was a dedicated supporter of the arts, which he saw as complementary to religion.

He even went so far as to dedicate a book and documentary to discussing works that shaped and inspired him.

‘A work of art is the strongest evidence that incarnation is possible,’ he wrote in Mia Idea Di Arte (My Idea of Art) (2015), co-written with journalist Tiziana Lupi.

In the latter, he cited the sculptures of Buenos Aires artist Alejandro Mamo, which are assembled with homeless children and factory workers, as an example of art being used to ’[care] and [cure] a society injured by indifference’.

‘I too learned from him,’ he said.

The Vatican said the Argentinian pontiff died from a stroke and heart failure at his residence Casa Santa Marta, the guest house in Vatican City where he has lived since replacing Pope Benedict XVI in 2013, opting out from the Vatican Palace. —[O]