The Jesuits' church conservation project : sacred art as a vehicle for re-evangelisation in Malta

Abstract

This paper investigates the Jesuits’ Church conservation project in Valletta, Malta, as a compelling model for how sacred art and heritage restoration can be revitalised into a comprehensive programme of re-evangelisation in a secular age. Rooted in Pope Benedict XVI’s theological vision of the Via Pulchritudinis—the Way of Beauty—it contends that sacred spaces, when restored and animated through artistic excellence, do not merely preserve the past but prophetically engage the present. The study focuses on the Oratory of the Immacolata, where conservation was matched by a cultural programme that integrates sacred music, iconography, literature, and dramatic arts. This multidimensional approach offers not only aesthetic renewal but a pastoral and catechetical space capable of reawakening the spiritual imagination. Engaging with Charles Taylor’s notion of the “immanent frame” and Bishop Robert Barron’s emphasis on beauty as a universal path to transcendence, the paper explores how such programming constitutes a “sacramental interruption”—an aesthetic and spiritual resonance that reaches hearts where argument cannot. By weaving together the theological, artistic, and pastoral strands of sacred expression, the Jesuits’ Church project illustrates how beauty, in all its liturgical and cultural forms, can once more become a privileged path of encounter with the divine in an age of disenchantment.