Pope Urges Use of Religious Art

VATICAN CITY — Pope John Paul II has urged Roman Catholic bishops to promote Christian art as a spiritual weapon against the influence of advertising and the mass media.

The Pope, in a letter sent in December to mark the 1,200th anniversary of the Second Council of Nicea and released by the Vatican recently, said religious art had an important role in an increasingly secular society.

“The rediscovery of the Christian icon will raise awareness of the urgency for action against the depersonalizing, and sometimes degrading, effects of the many images which condition our lives in advertising and the mass media,” he said.

The Second Council of Nicea, held in the year 787, before the split between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, rejected iconoclasm and approved devotion to Christian images.