In a resent address to the 'Patrons of the Arts' (an orginisation that raises funds to support the Vatican museum) the Holy Father again praised and reflected upon the Catholic Church's innate disposition towards the beautiful.

"In every age," the Pontiff said, "Christians have sought to give expression to faith's vision of the beauty and order of God's creation, the nobility of our vocation as men and women made in his image and likeness, and the promise of a cosmos redeemed and transfigured by the grace of Christ." "The artistic treasures which surround us are not simply impressive monuments of a distant past," Benedict XVI observed. "Rather, for the hundreds of thousands of visitors who contemplate them year after year, they stand as a perennial witness to the Church's unchanging faith in the Triune God who, in the memorable phrase of St. Augustine, is himself 'Beauty ever ancient, ever new.'"

For more information on the Patrons of the Arts you can visit
www.vatican-patrons.org