In his encyclical about the magnificence of humanity, Pope Leo XIV noted a symphony, a piece of art, and a movie as having "almost prophetic significance."
Paragraph 122 of Magnifica Humanitas says in part:
Indeed, precisely because we experience limits — vulnerability, suffering, and failure — we can recognize the inviolable dignity of every person, both our own and that of others. In this same experience, we remain capable of intuiting a fraternity greater than ourselves and of perceiving injustice as a scandal. Authentic culture and art preserve this spark, resisting the normalization of evil. For this reason, certain works have taken on an almost prophetic significance: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony can be seen as a desire for unity; Guernica as a denunciation of dehumanization; Schindler’s List as a call not to consign the past to oblivion.
Benedict XVI on Beethoven's 9th
Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th Symphony was his final complete symphony, composed between 1822 and 1824, and first performed the same year he finished it. It is considered one of humanity's greatest musical masterpieces.
The fourth and final movement of the work is known as the "Ode to Joy."
"The sensitive and involving interpretation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony - a further proof of their exceptional talent - will re-echo within me for a long time and will live on in my memory as a special present," said Pope Benedict XVI after a concert in 2007.
Benedict, in fact, considered the greatness of works such as this symphony as a proof of Christianity.
This symphony in particular, he said, "stirs me ever anew to wonder."
He went on to give this reflection about the symphony and Beethoven's experience of suffering and limitation that led to it:
After years of inner isolation and a withdrawn life in which Beethoven had to combat the internal and external difficulties that caused him depression and profound bitterness and threatened to stifle his artistic creativity, the composer, by then totally deaf, amazed the public in 1824 with a composition that broke with the traditional form of the symphony and with the cooperation of orchestra, choir and soloists, rose to an extraordinary finale of optimism and joy. What had happened?
The music itself allows attentive listeners to guess something of what was at the root of this unexpected explosion of joy. The overwhelming sentiment of jubilation transformed into music here is far from trivial or superficial: it is a sentiment won with effort, overcoming the inner emptiness of someone whom deafness had forced into isolation - the empty fifths at the beginning of the first movement and the constant bursting in of a gloomy atmosphere are an expression of it.
Silent loneliness, however, had taught Beethoven a new way of listening which went far beyond the mere ability to hear in his imagination the sound of the notes that he read or wrote. In this context, a mysterious saying of the Prophet Isaiah springs to my mind in which, speaking of a victory of truth and righteousness, he said: "In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see" (cf. 29: 18-24). Mention is thus made of a perceptiveness that those who obtain the grace of external and internal liberation receive from God as a gift.
Picasso's Guernica and the artist's answer to a Nazi
The Spanish Republic asked their native art star to create a work for the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. Just afterward, on April 26, 1937, Hitler and Mussolini -- as a sign of support for the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War -- obliterated the small town of Guernica with several waves of bombs. All of the deaths were civilian.
Picasso's huge masterpiece -- it is more than 25 by 11 feet -- was his answer to this tragedy, which he read about in the newspapers from Paris.
It is said that when Nazi ambassador Otto Abetz, looking at the painting, asked the artist, "Did you do this?" Picasso answered by saying, "No. You did."
The painting shows a mother mourning her dead child, a man begging, a dismembered horse and various other elements -- all in black and white and gray -- of the destruction of war.
The image is permanently displayed in Madrid.
'Schindler’s List'
This 1993 film tells the story of Oskar Schindler, who was able to save some 1,000 mostly Polish-Jewish refugees from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories.
The film won seven Academy awards and is considered one of the best films of all time.
Pope Leo has two other World War II movies on his list of four favorites: The Sound of Music and Life Is Beautiful.
