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   INTERVIEW WITH THE HOLY FATHER ON FLIGHT BOUND FOR SPAIN   
      
   VATICAN CITY, 6 NOV 2010 (VIS) - This morning during his flight to the Spanish   
   city of Santiago de Compostela the Holy Father responded to a number of   
   questions prepared by the journalists accompanying him on the papal plane. The   
   questions were put to the Pope by Holy See Press Office Director Fr. Federico   
   Lombardi S.J.   
      
   The first question concerned a congress on shrines held recently in Santiago de   
   Compostela. "You have said you are living your own pontificate 'as a pilgrim'   
   and your coat-of-arms contains the scallop shell. Please can you tell us   
   something of your views on pilgrimage, also in your personal life and   
   spirituality, and on the feelings with which you are going to Santiago as a   
   pilgrim".   
      
   "I could say that the fact of being 'on the road' is already part of my own   
   biography", said the Pope in his reply. "But that perhaps is an exterior   
   aspect. Nonetheless it has made me think of the instability of this life, of   
   the fact of being on a journey. Of course, against the idea of the pilgrimage   
   it could be said that God is everywhere, that there is no need to go anywhere   
   else. But it is also true that faith, by its very essence, is a pilgrim. ...   
   Sometimes it is necessary to escape from daily routine, from the world of   
   practicality and utility, to undertake a journey towards transcendence,   
   transcending self, transcending daily life and so discovering a new freedom, a   
   time for interior thought and for identifying oneself, for seeing others,   
   seeing God. This is what pilgrimage has always meant. ... It is clear that the   
   routes of Santiago are an element in the formation of the spiritual unity of   
   the European continent. By making pilgrimages here, people have discovered   
   themselves, they have discovered a shared European identity; and this movement   
   is re-emerging today, this need for spiritual and physical movement, finding   
   one another and thus discovering silence, freedom, renewal, God".   
      
   The second question was: "What significance can consecrating a church such as   
   the Sagrada Familia have at the beginning of the twenty-first century? Is there   
   some aspect of Gaudi's vision that has struck you in particular?"   
      
   "The truth is", said the Holy Father, "that this church is also an appropriate   
   sign for our own times. In Gaudi's vision there are above all three elements   
   that call my attention. The first is the blending of continuity and novelty,   
   tradition and creativity. Gaudi had the courage to make himself part of the   
   great tradition of the cathedrals. Using a completely new approach, he dared in   
   his own time to make the cathedral a place for the solemn meeting between God   
   and man. And this courage to remain within tradition, but with a creativity   
   that renews tradition and shows the unity and progress of history, is a   
   beautiful thing. Secondly, Gaudi chose the tripartite structure of the book of   
   nature, the book of Scripture and the book of liturgy. This is of great   
   importance. Scripture is made present in the liturgy, it becomes real today, it   
   is no longer a Scripture of two thousand years ago but is celebrated, made   
   real. In the celebration of Scripture creation speaks and finds its true   
   response because, as St. Paul tells us, creation suffers and ... awaits the   
   children of God; i.e., those who see it in the light of God. This fusion   
   between meaning and creation, between Scripture and adoration, is a very   
   important message for today. Finally, the third point is that this church was   
   born of a typically nineteenth-century form of devotion: St. Joseph, the Holy   
   Family of Nazareth, the mystery of Nazareth. But this devotion of the past   
   could be said to have a great deal of importance today because the problem of   
   the family, the renewal of the family as society's fundamental cell, is the   
   great theme showing us the way to build society and to create a unity of faith   
   and life, of religion and society. The main theme here is that of the family,   
   for God Himself became a child in a family and He calls us to build and live in   
   families".   
      
   "Gaudi and the Sagrada Familia are a very effective expression of the   
   relationship between faith and art", said the third questioner. "How can faith   
   today regain its place in the world of art and culture? I this an important   
   theme for your pontificate?"   
      
   "It is indeed", said the Pope. "You know that I have given a lot of emphasis to   
   the relationship between faith and reason; that faith, Christian faith, has its   
   identity only in openness to reason, and that reason becomes authentic if it   
   transcends itself towards faith. But the relationship between faith and art is   
   equally important, because truth, which is the aim and goal of reason, finds   
   expression and authenticity in beauty, where it reveals itself as truth. ...   
   The relationship between truth and beauty is unbreakable, and this is why we   
   need beauty. From earliest times the Church, even in the great modesty and   
   poverty of the age of persecutions, used art and painting, expressions of God's   
   salvation in the images of the world, singing, and later building. All this is   
   and remains a constituent part of the Church. For this reason the Church has   
   been mother to the arts for many centuries. The great treasures of Western art   
   - music, architecture, painting - were born from the faith of the Church. Today   
   there is some dissent, but this harms both art and faith. An art which loses   
   its transcendent roots no longer tends towards God, it is a truncated art   
   without a living root. A faith which only has the art of the past, is no longer   
   faith in the present, and today it must again express itself as everlasting   
   truth. And so the dialogue and meeting between art and faith is inscribed in   
   the profound essence of the faith. We must do all we can so that today too   
   faith is expressed in authentic art, as in the case of Gaudi, with continuity   
   and novelty, so that art does not lose contact with faith".   
      
   The next question concerned the recent creation of a council for new   
   evangelisation. "Many people have asked whether Spain, with the growth of   
   secularisation and the fall in religious practice, is one of the countries you   
   considered as the target of the new dicastery, even the principal target".   
      
   Benedict XVI replied: "In creating this new dicastery, my thoughts went per se   
   to the whole world, because new schools of thought and difficulties in   
   reflecting on the concepts of Scripture and theology are universal. Yet there   
   is of course a centre, and that centre is the Western world with its secularism   
   and the continuity of its faith, which must seek to renew itself in order to   
   remain as faith today and to respond to the challenge of secularism. All the   
   great countries of the West have their own experience of this problem. ...   
   Spain has always been, on the one hand, a country of origin of the faith: we   
   recall how the rebirth of Catholicism in the modern age came about above all   
   thanks to Spain. St. Ignatius of Loyola, St, Teresa and St. John of the Cross   
   were figures who truly renewed Catholicism and moulded its modern face. Yet it   
   is equally true that Spain also saw the birth of laicism, of anticlericalism, a   
   strong and aggressive secularism such as that of the 1930s. And this dispute,   
   this clash between faith and modernity, both very lively, is coming about again   
   in Spain today. Thus, the future of the faith and of the meeting (meeting not   
   clash) between faith and secularism has its focal point in Spanish culture. In   
   this sense I thought of all the great countries of the West but especially also   
   of Spain".   
      
   The final question was: "With your trip next year for World Youth Day, you will   
   have made three visits to Spain, more than to any other country. Why this   
   privilege? Is it a sign of love or of particular concern?"   
      
   "Naturally it is a sign of love", the Holy Father explained. "It could be said   
   that it is by chance that I will have made three trips to Spain. The first was   
   for the great international gathering of families in Valencia. How could the   
   Pope remain absent if the families of the world come together? Next year is   
   World Youth Day, the meeting of young people from all over the world in Madrid.   
   The Pope cannot be absent from such an occasion. Finally, we have the   
   Compostela Holy Year and the consecration ... of the church of the Holy Family   
   in Barcelona. How could the Pope not come? Of themselves, then, these occasions   
   are challenges, almost a compulsion to attend. But precisely the fact that in   
   Spain there are so many occasions shows how it truly is a country full of   
   dynamism, full of the strength of faith. And the faith responds to challenges   
   which are also present in Spain. Therefore, chance has brought me here, but   
   this chance reveals a profound reality, the strength of the faith and the   
   strength of the challenge to the faith".   
   PV-SPAIN/VIS 20101107 (1550)   
      
   SUMMARY   
      
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