"The history of the Church is also, inseparably, the history of art and culture". This is the belief of the Pope, according to whom "such works as the Summa theologiae by Thomas Aquinas, the Divine Comedy, the Cathedral of Chartres, the Sistine Chapel or Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantatas are syntheses, unrivalled in their own ways, between the Christian faith and the human expression". If those mentioned are "the highlights" of the "synthesis between faith and culture" immediately specified the Pope, in his speech to the members of the Papal Council of Culture , "they are combined every day in the life and work of all the baptised people, in that hidden work of art that is everyone’s love story with the living God and with the brothers, in the joy and in the effort of following Jesus Christ in their everyday lives". "Now more than ever went on the Pope , the mutual opening between the cultures is a privileged ground for dialogue among the men who are in search of a true humanism, beyond the differences that divide them". Hence the need, said the Pontiff, to "promote, within the Church, that evangelical culture that is the leaven, the salt and the light of the Kingdom amidst the men".
