At 12.15 today, a press conference was held in the Holy See Press Office, Via della Conciliazione 54, to present the Holy See Pavilion, entitled Opera Aperta (“Open Work”), at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – Venice Biennale 2025, to be held from 10 May to 23 November 2025.
The speakers were: His Eminence Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education; Professor Marina Otero Verzier, curator of the Holy See Pavilion 2025 (by remote link); Dr. Giovanna Zabotti, curator of the Holy See Pavilion 2025; Tatiana Bilbao, architect, Tatiana Bilbao Estudio; Anna Puigjaner, MAIO Architects (by remote link); Dr. Michele Coppola, executive director for Art, Culture and Historical Heritage – Intesa Sanpaolo, director general of Gallerie d’Italia; and José Texeira, president of the Grupo DST (by remote link).
The following is the intervention of His Eminence Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça:
Intervention of His Eminence Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça
Ten years ago, Pope Francis published the Encyclical Letter Laudato si’, which represents a milestone both in the Magisterium of the Holy Father, and in the growing understanding that the contemporary world is required to build on our all being inhabitants of the same common home. But not only that; Laudato si’ is also a point of reference in the awareness that it is from here that we must start to mature a new cultural vision. In fact, in the face of enormous challenges - such as that of artificial intelligence - and in order to guide it wisely, we are called to rediscover and strengthen community intelligence: that which makes us creative protagonists of social friendship, rather than tired repeaters of the logic of control, exclusion and rejection.
The Encyclical Laudato si’ is one of the great texts of the twenty-first century – a magnificent religious text, but also a high-impact cultural and political manifesto. Its bold undertaking passes through the critical revision of the dominant models of development, in which the obtuse forms of a despotic anthropocentrism multiply, tragically hindering what is, on the contrary, the only generative condition of the future: transforming ourselves into wise curators of relationships both with the environment and with human communities. Today we need weavers of relationships, who believe in the value of repair and care. We need to find new rationalities that dare to embrace collaborative social practices and risk more effective paradigms of restitution. So much so that Pope Francis’ proposal, which confidently finds allies in different religious and cultural geographies, insists on the importance of understanding that everything that exists is part of a systemic relationship. “Everything is connected”, says the Pope (Encyclical Letter Laudato si’, no. 91). The situation of the human being cannot therefore be considered without taking into account the situation of everyone’s home, which is the planet.
So what will the Holy See Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2025 be? It will be a pavilion-parable. The title Opera Aperta (“Open Work”) presents it as a building site, as an ongoing process in which everyone is invited to collaborate: architects, thinkers, inhabitants of the sestiere or city neighbourhood, associations, and even visitors to the Biennale... In the space of the old oratory of Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, which requires structural renovation work, a parable will be narrated because, at the same time as the walls and architectural details of the building are repaired, neighbourhood relations and intergenerational hospitality will also be healed, thus simultaneously reconstructing physical space and social space. Our wish is that this pavilion-parable may be a concrete expression, in the field of architecture, of the prophetic intuitions contained in Laudato si’ and become an active laboratory of collective human intelligence, bringing together reason and affection, professionalism and conviviality, research and ordinary life.
On behalf of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, which is responsible for the Holy See Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2025, I would like to thank those men and women - and with great pleasure I emphasize the women here - who are involved in its conception and realization.
First and foremost, the curatorial team composed of the curators Marina Otero Verzier, who has had a remarkable career in the field of architectural thought, and Giovanna Zabotti, who is Venetian and will help to build the interconnection of this project with the local community and the flow of the global community. Enormous thanks go to the architect Tatiana Bilbao, present here, and her Studio. Tatiana Bilbao, born in 1972 in Mexico City, is one of the most extraordinary architects of our time, and the language of her work plan includes recognizable expressions such as “social connectivity”, “interaction with the context” and “sustainable design”. It is a great honour for us that she is one of the central names of the Holy See Pavilion, in a joint project with the Catalan collective MAIO Architects. The MAIO collective, represented in this press conference by the architect Anna Puigjaner, whom we will hear via live link, was established in Barcelona in 2011 to propose an architecture that considers itself as an open spatial system, which has no problem in showing itself in its incompleteness, since from the outset, it favours social and environmental interactions. Thanks are also due to the Cor Arquitetos studio that will guarantee production, in the person of architect Roberto Cremascoli, Erika Pisciotta and Camilla Dunantoni, and to all the architects, designers and artists – and there are many of them, who with their collaboration will give this Pavilion a special liveliness.
I would like to make a very grateful mention of our sponsors: the main sponsor Intesa Sanpaolo, which has offered us its support since the last edition of the Biennale - and I nominate the representative present here, Dr. Michele Coppola, General Director of the Gallerie d'Italia; as well as the DST Group, which carries out an important activity in supporting artistic projects and which I greet here in the person of the Group's president, the engineer José Teixeira.
Finally, thanks are due to the collaboration that has been established with the Municipality of Venice and the constant support shown to us by the Patriarchate of Venice.
