Art & Interreligious Dialogue | Promoting Understanding

Presented at the Villa Medici in Rome, the exhibition Shared holy places brings together works and objects from different cultural and religious contexts in order to show how certain places of worship are invested by several monotheistic traditions. designed by the anthropologist Dionigi Albera, research director at the CNRS and professor at the Aix-Marseille University, the curator Raphaël Bories, former resident of the Villa Médicis and now at the Mucem, and the anthropologist Manoël Pénicaud (CNRS), it offers an approach that is both scientific and sensitive to these shared spaces.

Dionigi Albera is particularly attentive to migratory phenomena. He studied the question of Lampedusa and was interested in the religious phenomenon. Today, his work is exhibited at the Villa Medici at the end of the jubilee year and is of interest to believers who have come on pilgrimage or non-believers and anyone wishing to discover another form of interreligious dialogue. HE Madame Florence Mangin, during the opening, specified that it was “a project carrying a message of tolerance, mutual respect, sharing and peace.” The works aim to raise awareness in the viewer to move beyond conflicts, questions of power and memory. Crossing these rooms on the ground floor of the French Academy in Rome, the visitor becomes aware that everyone is a son or daughter of the same God.

From the Via Dolorosa to the Holy Sepulcher, from Saint Peter’s Basilica to the Great Synagogue of Rome, the pilgrim or visitor discovers many common points from paintings to objects. Judaism and Christianity thus share religious figures as well as places of devotion which continue to be frequented in contemporary times. This exhibition, rich in photos, paintings, tapestries and documents, invites everyone to regain awareness of the grandeur of places like Rome. Following Jerusalem, the eternal city is a holy city.

Jerusalem is home to the three monotheistic religions, Rome does the same. In addition to these 900 churches, it has a large Jewish community previously established in Trastevere and then in the current district since the 16th century. The Great Synagogue was completed in 1904 and the Great Mosque was inaugurated in 1995. To this religious wealth, we must add the Basilica of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem, the Scala Santa in the Lateran which are said to be relics that come straight from the Orient (mentioned in the exhibition.)

The presence of this exhibition in Rome then takes on its full meaning and allows us to measure the importance of interreligious dialogue in a world prey to violence, terrorism and war.

Land, sea, mountain, Torah, Bible, Koran: three common places and three different books to try to understand the mystery of God. The exhibition is built from places shared by monotheistic religions. After having mentioned certain terrestrial places in particular Jerusalem or Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, another room is dedicated to the Mediterranean. Crossing this room, the words of Pope Francis can resonate like an echo in front of the different representations of the Mediterranean. Artistically, “the sea lies before us; it is a source of life, but also a place that evokes the tragedy of shipwrecks causing death. We are gathered in memory of those who did not survive, who were not saved. Let us not get used to considering shipwrecks as news items and deaths at sea as numbers: no, they are first and last names, they are faces and stories, they are broken lives and dreams destroyed.” Mediterranean meetings, September 22, 2023.

While Pope Francis compared this sea to a cemetery, the visitor cannot remain indifferent to the crosses made by the cabinetmaker Francesco Tuccio with the wood from the boats of migrants stranded in Lampedusa. Paintings kept at the Mucem remembering the sailors who died at sea who entrusted themselves to Notre-Dame de la Garde also make up a large part of this room dedicated to the Mediterranean.

The last room of the exhibition is dedicated to the mountain and more particularly to Mount Sinai recognized by the three religions as the place where Moses received the tablets of the Law. Among the photos on display, a striking image highlights the bell tower of the Sainte-Catherine monastery, nestled on Sinai, neighboring the minaret of the accompanying mosque. “The chapel and the mosque which stand opposite each other are falling into ruin without Christians or Arabs thinking of rebuilding them. We see, however, by the ex-votos they contain, that the pilgrims of the two nations have not abandoned them and come to worship there, some the son of God and others the prophet Allah” writes Alexandre Dumas about this bell tower and the mosque on Sinai. The only objective: to address God.

Leaving this exhibition, we realize how religious traditions intersect and respond to each other, inviting everyone to recognize the fraternity that unites us. Faithful to the spirit of Pope Francis, this initiative encourages concretely bringing interreligious dialogue to life, like the call of Leo XIV to be “men and women of dialogue”.