Chicago writer-director Lucia Mauro’s new documentary, I Have a Name – that puts a respectful face on homelessness through the programs of  The Chicago HELP Initiative – won Best Documentary at the 2020 Mirabile Dictu International Catholic Film Festival at the Vatican in Rome. The prestigious film festival, under the High Patronage of the Pontific...

Italian-born Cardinal-designate Silvano Tomasi describes himself as “one of those 40 million Americans who were born outside the United States, but at the same time are part of the makeup of the country.” The Italian-American cardinal-designate, who celebrated his 80th birthday on Columbus Day, has not lived full time in the United States since 198...

What: #RAFFAELLO500 | Raphael in the Vatican: A special year for the Vatican Museums - When: Tuesday, November 10, 2020 | 11:00 PST Zoom Webinar with BARBARA JATTA, Director of the Vatican Museums On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Raffaello Sanzio’s death, while we wait for cultural institutions to overcome these difficult times, the netw...

The Vatican City is now on the UK's quarantine list announced by Grant Shapps yesterday afternoon. I was there at the time, savouring the once inconceivable pleasure of having the Vatican Museums almost to myself. In the Pinacoteca picture gallery I sat alone admiring the larger than life tapestries made from Raphael’s cartoons, Leonardo da Vinci’s...

Rightly considered a jewel of world art, visiting the Sistine Chapel is a defining experience, one that leaves a mark in the mind and the soul. Famously painted by Michelangelo, in truth other famous artists participated to its frescoing, too, including Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Rosselli. If you have not had the chance to see this magni...

While governments around the world enact strict measures to attempt to limit the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, people without a fixed home or living in extreme poverty remain stranded in deserted cities. “Right now, the homeless continue to be homeless,” Pope Francis said an interview with his biographer Austen Ivereigh published Wednesday (A...

With the Eternal City turned into a stark De Chirico landscape because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Vatican will mark an uprecedented Holy Week as celebrations leading up to and including Easter, Christianity’s most important holiday, will allow only for virtual viewing. In past years Settimana Santa, the name for Holy Week in Italy, was a period...

As the coronavirus emergency is keeping us all at home, it is still possible to travel virtually to Italy and visit some of its outstanding museums, from the comfort and safety of your couch at home. Here are four that make their collections and rooms available online, with special initiatives in place specifically during these times of lockdown, w...

This week, as part of the celebrations commemorating the 500th anniversary of the death of the famous Renaissance artist Raphael Sanzio, the Vatican Museums will be hosting an extraordinary exhibit: for the first time, the tapestries designed by Raphael for the Sistine Chapel are being displayed in the original location for which they were intended...

For one week the great tapestries designed by Raphael will return to the Sistine Chapel as the Vatican celebrates the 500th anniversary of the death of the High Renaissance master. The 10 tapestries, which will be hung at eye level along the chapel's wall under Michelangelo's frescoed ceiling, will be on display from 17-23 February 2020. Commission...