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The renowned Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s famous sculpture “Salvator Mundi” (Savior of the World) is on display at Rome’s airport. / Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport

Washington D.C., Apr 20, 2023 / 12:47 pm (CNA).

The next time you are flying through Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport you can see Jesus at Terminal 1.

The renowned Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s famous sculpture Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World) is on display at Rome’s airport. 

Created by Bernini in 1679 and crafted entirely out of marble, Salvator Mundi is a Baroque masterpiece and the last sculpture finished by the master carver before he died in 1680.

The bust depicts Jesus with long, curling hair, looking serenely outward and stretching out his hand as if in blessing.

Salvator Mundi was only rediscovered in 2001 and can normally be seen at Rome’s Basilica of San Sebastiano Fuori le Mura.

The airport gained permission from the Italian Interior Ministry to display the piece for a limited time to commemorate Terminal 1’s grand reopening.

According to a statement by Aeroporti di Roma, the company that manages the Rome area airports, the display opened on April 12 and is part of the airport’s effort “to promote local and national art and culture among Italian and foreign passengers.”

According to The Art Newspaper, Bernini’s famous work will remain on display at the airport for approximately four weeks. 

Located in Fiumicino and servicing the Rome metropolitan area, the Leonardo da Vinci Airport is the busiest in Italy.

The terminal housing the display can accommodate 6 million passengers annually, according to Areoporti di Roma.

Now, all those travelers can catch a glimpse of Jesus and perhaps say a quick prayer on the way to catch their flight.

Considered by many the greatest sculptor of the Baroque period, Catholics may be most familiar with Bernini’s gorgeous, twisted columns and baldachin (canopy) that surround and hover over the main altar of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Some of Bernini’s other most famous religious works include The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, the Death of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni, and the colonnade enclosing St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.

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Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, May 12, 2019 / 07:46 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has given the green light for Catholics to organize pilgrimages to Medjugorje, a site of alleged Marian apparitions, though the Church has not yet given a verdict on the apparitions’ authenticity.

The pope’s authorization of pilgrimages to the site is not to be understood as an “authentication” of the alleged apparitions, “which still require an examination by the Church,” papal spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said in a statement May 12.

He added that anyone leading pilgrimages to the site should avoid creating “confusion or ambiguity under the doctrinal aspect,” including priests who intend to celebrate Mass there.

The provision was made as an acknowledgment of the “abundant fruits of grace” that have come from Medjugorje and to promote those “good fruits.” It is also part of the “particular pastoral attention” of Pope Francis to the place, Gisotti said.

The announcement of the papal authorization was made May 12 by the Vatican’s apostolic visitor to the site, Archbishop Henryk Hoser, and Archbishop Luigi Pezzuto, apostolic nuncio to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Hoser, retired archbishop of Warsaw-Prague, was appointed apostolic visitor to Medjugorje by Pope Francis in May 2018. His directive, which is of an undetermined length, is to oversee the pastoral needs at the site of the alleged Marian apparitions.

Hoser’s appointment as apostolic visitor followed his service as papal envoy to the site in 2017.

In January 2014, a Vatican commission concluded a nearly four-year-long investigation on the doctrinal and disciplinary aspects of the Medjugorje apparitions, and submitted a document to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

When the congregation has analyzed the commission’s findings, it will finalize a document on the site, which will be submitted to the pope, who will make a final decision.

The alleged apparitions began June 24, 1981, when six children in Medjugorje, a town in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, began to experience phenomena which they have claimed to be apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

According to these six “seers,” the apparitions contained a message of peace for the world, a call to conversion, prayer and fasting, as well as certain secrets surrounding events to be fulfilled in the future.

These apparitions are said to have continued almost daily since their first occurrence, with three of the original six children – who are now young adults – continuing to receive apparitions every afternoon because not all the “secrets” intended for them have been revealed.

Since their beginning, the alleged apparitions have been a source of both controversy and conversion, with many flocking to the city for pilgrimage and prayer, and some claiming to have experienced miracles at the site, while many others claim the visions are non-credible.

Pope Francis visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in June 2015 but declined to stop in Medjugorje during his trip. During his return flight to Rome, he indicated that the process of investigation in the apparitions was nearly complete.

On the return flight from a visit to the Marian shrine of Fatima in May 2017, the pope spoke about the final document of the Medjugorje commission, sometimes referred to as the “Ruini report,” after the head of the commission, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, calling it “very, very good,” and noting a distinction between the first Marian apparitions at Medjugorje and the later ones.

“The first apparitions, which were to children, the report more or less says that these need to continue being studied,” he said, but as for “presumed current apparitions, the report has its doubts,” the pope said.

On multiple occasions, the pope has said he is suspicious of the ongoing apparitions, “I prefer the Madonna as Mother, our Mother, and not a woman who’s the head of an office, who every day sends a message at a certain hour. This is not the Mother of Jesus.”

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Wiktoria Ulma with six of her children. / The Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II.

Rome Newsroom, Feb 15, 2023 / 04:00 am (CNA).
The beatification date has been announced for Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children,… […]