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Rome's Jubilee Church for the Third Millennium By Breda Catherine Ennis |
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This celebrated church is little more than another bridge to the familiar modernist enterprise.
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While on my way in the car to see the new church built by Richard Meier on the outskirts of Rome, named “God the Merciful Father” (in the original Italian, “Dio Padre Misericordioso”), two phrases kept coming into my mind from Pope John Paul II’s Letter to Artists, in which he remarked: “even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience.” He goes on to mention what the Fathers said at the end of Vatican Council II: “This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair.” Even to people unfamiliar with Rome, it will surely come as no surprise to learn that the celebrated beauty of the center of Rome bears no resemblance whatever to the city’s drab suburbs. As we drove along the Via Prenestina on the way to Tor Tre Teste — the site of the new Meier church — I noticed that the architecture along the way got worse and worse. And, of course, when architecture is dull...
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