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Great emotion this morning in Rome during the audience with Pope Francis of the Ravenna delegation led by the mayor and president of the Province Michele de Pascale, by the Archbishop of Ravenna and Cervia Lorenzo Ghizzoni, by the prefect Enrico Caterino in the context of Dante’s celebrations.
“Receiving the blessing on the cross from Pope Francis – commented the mayor of Pascale – It was a great emotion; We live very moving and significant moments both for his words on the universal value of Ravenna’s artistic heritage and for the recognition of Dante’s work by the Church, and for the announcement of a reflection that the Pope in 2021 will dedicate to the Supreme Poet , in the year of the seventh centenary of his death, as did Paul VI on the occasion of the seventh centenary of his birth; it will be a momentous event that will bring Dante to the attention of the world by a great protagonist and the most authoritative voice of our time; having contributed to the initiative of this Pope makes us enormously proud ”.
The mayor then gave Pope Francis, who was very grateful, the original copy of the project for Dante’s tomb (at the end of the press release). The delegation also included councilors Elsa Signorino and Massimo Cameliani, provincial councilor Daniele Perini, Antonio Patuelli, president of ABI and the La Cassa di Ravenna group, Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari, directors and founders of the Teatro delle Albe – Ravenna Teatro.
For reasons related to the covid, the delegation was made up of a small number of people, but this did not make this new stage of the Dante celebrations any less significant, which was inaugurated on September 5 in Ravenna in the presence of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, who constituted another precious moment of high spiritual and symbolic value.
The cross, which will be placed back in the tomb, is a Greek cross, with four amethysts at the ends, placed on the marble slab by Pietro Lombardo. Even before the recent restoration of the tomb, it had been replaced by a copy.
On the anniversary of the seventh centenary of the birth of Dante, Paul VI with the apostolic letter “Altissimi cantus”, of December 7, 1965, highlighted the deep interest of the Church in the figure of Dante. The apostolic letter completed the series of initiatives through which Pope Montini wanted to express his admiration and that of the whole Church for the cantor of the Divine Comedy. On September 19 of the same year the Pope sent the golden cross to the poet’s tomb in Ravenna, as a sign of the resurrection professed by Dante.
The cross in particular sanctioned the recognition of Dante as a devout son of the Church, placing his relics under the fundamental sign of the Christian mystery, rejecting the obsolete idea of a heretical and rebellious Dante. In particular, Paul VI wrote to Archbishop Baldassarri of Ravenna that the Divine Comedy is “a poem of humanity, civilization, philosophy and theology, a poem of the union and harmony of the natural order with the supernatural, of the present life with the eternal” . “Honor the highest poet!” It is the invitation-appeal with which Paul VI concludes the “Altissimi cantus”.
The Pope’s speech will be published on the website of the Holy See in the afternoon http://www.vatican.va/content/vatican/it.html
The cover photos are from the Vatican-Media Photography Service.
Tribute of the Ravenna City Council to the Pope
The poet Dante Alighierj a burial card. Louis Valentine Gonzaga Prov. Aemil. Leg. A background. Why is it restored. Camillio Morigia Archil. Bronze tablet Expressum in 1783.
Florence Eredi by Benedict and John. Baptist Cecchi, 1783.
First edition; album size 647 × 450 mm; Latin text; ten cards, printed only on the obverse, including the buttonhole, portrait of Dante, cover, dedication of the author to Giacomo Durazzo, four illustrated plates, one white card.
The series of engravings was published in memory of the construction of Dante’s Tomb, commissioned in 1780 by Luigi Valenti Gonzaga (1725-1808), a cardinal linked to Ravenna: the company established the fame of the Ravenna architect Camillo Morigia (1743-1795 ), author of the building’s design, and favored numerous commissions, even outside the city.
The dedication refers to the visit of Giacomo Durazzo and his wife María Teresa Valenti Gonzaga and the indignation of the Genoese intellectual in front of the previous tomb of Dante, which was in poor condition: the project for the new mausoleum was therefore based on the will from Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga to remedy the improper state of the poet’s burial and to donate to Ravenna a monument worthy of Dante’s undying glory. The architectural tables are due to the invention of Camillo Morigia and the translation by Benedetto Eredi (1750-post 1815), a Ravenna engraver active in Florence.
THE POPE’S SPEECH TO THE DELEGATION OF RAVENNA
Dear brothers and sisters! I welcome you and thank you for coming to share with me the joy and commitment to inaugurate the celebrations of the 7th centenary of the death of Dante Alighieri. I am particularly grateful to Archbishop Ghizzoni for the introductory words.
Ravenna, for Dante, is the city of the “last refuge” – the first was Verona -; In fact, in your city the poet spent his last years and completed his work: according to tradition, the final songs of the Paradiso.
Therefore, in Ravenna he concluded his earthly journey; and concluded thatexile that so marked his existence and also inspired his writing. The poet Mario Luzi highlighted the value of agitation and the superior discovery that the experience of exile reserved for Dante. This makes us immediately think of the Bible, the exile of the people of Israel in Babylon, which constitutes, as it were, one of the “matrices” of biblical revelation. Similarly, for Dante, exile was so significant that it became a key to interpreting not only his life, but the “journey” of every man and woman in history and beyond.
Dante’s death in Ravenna took place – as Boccaccio writes – ‘on the day when exaltation of the holy cross the Church celebrates it ». My thoughts turn to that golden cross that the Poet certainly saw in the little midnight blue dome, dotted with nine hundred stars, of the Galla Placidia Mausoleum; or so, jeweled and “sparkling” Christ – to use the image of Paradise – (cf. XIV, 104), from the apsidal basin of Sant’Apollinare in Classe.
In 1965, on the occasion of the seventh centenary of his birth, Saint Paul VI gave Ravenna a golden cross for his tomb, which had remained until then – as he said – “devoid of any such sign of religion and hope.” (Address to the Sacred College and the Roman Prelature, December 23, 1965). This same cross, on the occasion of this centenary, will shine again in the place that preserves the mortal remains of the Poet. Let it be an invitation to hope, that hope of which Dante is a prophet (cf. Message on the 750th anniversary of the birth of Dante Alighieri, May 4, 2015).
Therefore, the hope is that the celebrations of the seventh centenary of the death of the great poet will encourage us to revisit his Comedy so that, aware of our condition as exiles, we allow ourselves to be provoked on this path of conversion “from disorder to wisdom, from sin to holiness, from misery to joy, from the terrifying contemplation of hell to the beatification of paradise” (St. Paul VI, Apostolic Letter mp Highest song; December 7, 1965). Dante, in fact, invites us once again to rediscover the lost or obscured meaning of our human path.
At times, it may seem that these seven centuries have dug an insurmountable distance between us, men and women of the postmodern and secularized era, and him, an extraordinary exponent of a golden age of European civilization. However, something tells us that this is not the case. Adolescents, for example – even those of today -, if they have the opportunity to approach Dante’s poetry in a way accessible to them, inevitably find, on the one hand, all the remoteness of the author and his world; and yet, on the other hand, they feel a surprising resonance. This happens especially where the allegory leaves space for the symbol, where the human is more evident and naked, where the civil passion vibrates more intensely, where the fascination for truth, beauty and the good, ultimately the fascination for God. feel its powerful attraction.
So, taking advantage of this resonance that goes beyond the centuries, we too, as Saint Paul VI invited us to do, will be able to enrich ourselves with the experience of Dante to cross the many dark forests of our land and happily make our pilgrimage through history, to reach. to the dream and desired goal of every man: “the love that moves the sun and the other stars” (By. 33, 145) (cf. Message on the 750th anniversary of the birth of Dante Alighieri, May 4, 2015).
Thanks again for this visit and best wishes for the centennial celebrations. With God’s help, I intend to offer a broader reflection on this next year. I cordially bless each of you, your collaborators and the entire Ravenna community.
And please don’t forget to pray for me.
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