The ascendancy of the new Pope Leo XIV was marked by a gift from President Zelenksyy and appreciation of a van Gogh.
On Sunday, after the first Sunday mass since his ascendancy as the new Holy Father, Pope Leo met with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine. Zelenskyy gifted the pope a painting of Madonna and the child. However, what made the painting stand out was it base: it was painted over a wood panel from an artillery crate used in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Later writing about the gift, Zelenksyy elaborated: “For many peoples, the image of a mother with a child is a symbol of life that must be protected. Today, we presented Pope Leo XIV with a special icon—The Mother of God with the Infant, painted on a fragment of a box from heavy artillery weapons. It is about our children. About those who suffered from the war, whom Russia deliberately kidnapped and deported, and whom they are very much waiting for at home, in Ukraine.”
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On Wednesday, during his first public speech since becoming the pope, Pope Leo invoked the spirit of Vincent van Gogh. Speaking about the 1888 painting The Sower At Sunset, which features a farm land and a brilliant sun in the background, the Holy Father referenced the original parable it was named after. “What strikes me,” he said, “is that, behind the sower, van Gogh painted the grain already ripe” – referencing the sun. The moral, as per him, was that “God drives history, even if He sometimes seems distant or hidden.”
