Pope Celebrates Restoration of Sistine Chapel

Recalling his own election as pope in the Sistine Chapel and seated in front of Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment,” Pope John Paul II led patrons of the arts Saturday in a ceremony celebrating the completion of the chapel’s restoration.

Beginning with Michelangelo’s works on the ceiling and wrapping up with Botticelli’s on the sidewalls, restorers have now brightened all the masterpieces in the chapel since the process began nearly 20 years ago.

“Uniting in our joy are faithful from every part of the world, to whom this place is dear not only for the masterpieces that it safeguards but also for the role that it plays in the life of the church,” the pope said.

He was speaking to the cardinals and the sponsors, many of them American, who picked up the $3-million tab for the final phase of restoration: the cleaning of the sidewalls frescoed in the 15th century by Botticelli, Perugino, Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli.

Before taking his place in a leather-backed chair placed in front of the “Last Judgment,” Michelangelo’s towering fresco behind the chapel’s altar, the pope looked around, wide-eyed and intent, at the fresh colors that emerged after the last of the scaffolding came down in recent days.

He later proclaimed the restoration “perfectly” done.

The first two phases of restoration involved the monumental task of cleaning centuries of dust and candle smoke from Michelangelo’s Creation fresco series on the upper reaches and ceiling of the chapel.

Japanese television sponsored the spectacular ceiling restoration in exchange for exclusive reproduction rights for many years.

Then restorers moved on to the Renaissance artist’s “Last Judgment” on the wall behind the altar before tackling the final stage, the lower wall frescoes depicting scenes ranging from St. Peter, the first pope, as he received the symbolic keys, to the miraculous parting of the Red Sea.

New backers, who belong to a group called Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums, paid for the cleaning of the frescoes on the sidewalls.

An American Dominican, the Rev. Allen Duston, who led the fund-raising efforts, whispered the names of the donors in the ear of Cardinal Edmund Szoka of Detroit, who then presented the sponsors, one by one, to the pope at the end of the ceremony.

Szoka noted that the sponsors included individuals, families and charitable organizations. He didn’t name them.

During the ceremony, many heads turned upward to gaze at Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes even though the ceremony was held to inaugurate the wall frescoes’ restoration.

After praising the “grandeur” of Michelangelo’s work, the pope, his left hand trembling badly as he spoke, reminded those at the ceremony that “today the gaze is invited to linger on the humbler but still meaningful” cycle of wall frescoes, which were commissioned by Pope Sistus IV.