**1. Introduction**

In 2001, the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church (PCCHC 2001) sent the catholic bishops the Circular Letter, *The pastoral function of ecclesiastical museums*. The ecclesiastical museum was defined as 'a place that documents not only the human genius but also offers an insight into the cultural and religious life in order to guarantee its existence at the present time' (PCCHC 2001, sec. Introduction), outlining its role for the care, valorisation, and promotion of their collections. The importance of this document is linked to high significance of the religious heritage within the global cultural heritage and, in particular, the Catholic heritage prominent in Southern European countries.

Throughout centuries, Catholic Church art patronage fulfilled a fundamental role in the development of art by establishing forms, contents, and meanings and simultaneously functioned as a proof of wealth and social status and as an instrument of power and propaganda. However, from the evolution of modern European nations, the secularisation of public life, and the rise of the art market, the role of the Church in commissioning works of art and its collection has broken down.

In the second half of the 20th century, and during the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church called for art and architecture simplification, austerity, and a decorative stripping of religious spaces. These orientations imply the disaffection of many works of art and artefacts in disuse. A museological destiny appeared as an appropriate solution for their protection, avoiding the risks of damage and loss. While considering that the Church mission is not focused on the preservation or interpretation of cultural heritage but

**Citation:** Roque, Maria Isabel. 2023. Ecclesiastical Museums and the Pontifical Letter on Its Pastoral Functions. *Religions* 14: 96. https:// doi.org/10.3390/rel14010096

Academic Editors: Fátima Matos Silva, Isabel Borges and Helena Albuquerque

Received: 1 August 2022 Revised: 27 December 2022 Accepted: 5 January 2023 Published: 10 January 2023

**Copyright:** © 2023 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

evangelisation, the Circular Letter proposed the ecclesiastical museum as a way to valorise art and use it for a pastoral purpose.

Two decades after the Circular Letter, it is considered appropriate to reflect on the relevance of their principles and impact, evaluating how it refers to the museological theory and practices. The aim is to analyse the Circular Letter in the light of current museum studies, describing their essential concepts, emphasising those more remarkable by their updating and innovating features, and verifying eventual gaps. Although studies focusing on the Circular Letter are scarce, the text by Marta Tigano (2021), with an analysis of the impact of the principles stated therein and the role of ecclesiastical museums in contemporary society, and that of Domenica Primerano (2020), former President of the Association of Italian Ecclesiastical Museums (AMEI) (2015–2020), stand out, analysing the museum's mission from this document and Pope Francis' message to the private audience granted access to AMEI on 24 May 2019.

The internal analysis of the document is complemented by bibliographical research on religious museum studies. The theoretical frame about museums of religion is based on the works of Crispin Paine (Buggeln et al. 2017; Paine 1999, 2013, 2019), Françoise Mairesse (2003, 2014), and Maria Isabel Roque (2011, 2013, 2020) as well as the proceedings of the 41st Symposium organised by ICOFOM under the general theme 'Museology and the Sacred' (Mairesse 2018), held in Tehran on 15–19 October 2018, and the ICOFOM Study Series special issue 'Museology and the sacred' (Mairesse 2019). In a broader view of the mission, management, fruition, and connection to the territory of ecclesiastical museums, and with the benefit of including case studies, there is also the work edited by Sibilio and Matacena (2021).

This paper is structured into three parts: the first, introductory, aims to briefly present the ecclesiastical heritage and the collecting history within Catholic Church; the second begins with an introductory note about the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican to contextualise the descriptive presentation of the Circular Letter *The pastoral function of ecclesiastical museums*, following its structure; and in the third, the document guidelines are discussed in terms of current museology.
