Chiesa: Required Reading for Visitors to the Sistine Chapel: "Spe Salvi"

The Last Judgment returns powerfully to the fore. An outstanding book gives a new interpretation of Michelangelo's fresco. And Benedict XVI, with his second encyclical, throws new light on the ultimate destiny of man and the world

ROMA, December 7, 2007 – Benedict XVI wrote the encyclical "Spe Salvi," which is entirely his own work, between last winter and spring. But he decided to publish it at the end of the liturgical year, on the brink of Advent, when the readings of the Mass are opening the perspective of the Last Judgment.

An important part of the encyclical is dedicated to the Last Judgment. The self-criticism that the pope asks of modern Christianity also concerns this essential chapter of the Christian faith, which he believes has "faded" in favor of an individualistic vision of man's destiny.


The idea of the Last Judgment survives more in art than it does in faith. But even the artists – the pope notes – have not always expressed the full and authentic meaning of the Judgment in their depictions. They have emphasized the "menace" more than the "splendor of hope."

The figure of Christ as judge that Michelangelo painted in the Sistine Chapel is the most famous image of the Last Judgment in the world. In this, in effect, "Christ's gesture of condemnation not only shakes his entire muscular body, it also constitutes the fresco's animating force. It makes the entire painting tremble, even in its farthest removed corners. His right arm, raised in the act of condemnation, is the same arm that in the next act will hurl all evildoers into the depths of hell."...