Magister on the "new evangelization" at the cathedral in Milan.

Now, who knows if this is all they’re up to, how selective Magister is in the telling, and so on. Even with those cautions, I’m having a hard time visualizing all of this and how help anyone, anywhere, connect with, you know, Christ. It’s elitist and self-aggrandizing.

One of the key phrases of the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI is “new evangelization.” But in the Duomo of Milan, the cathedral of one of the most important and populous dioceses in the world, governed by cardinal Carlo Maria Martini until 2002 and now by cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, this formula is being implemented in highly original ways.

Since September 22, 2005, in the cathedral’s crypt, beside the relics of Saint Charles Borromeo, who together with Saint Ambrose is a patron of Milan, there has been a video installation by English artist Mark Wallinger. It is entitled “Via Dolorosa.” The visitor enters a darkened box with black walls and three benches inside. He sits down and watches, for 18 minutes, scenes of the Passion excerpted from the film “Jesus of Nazareth” by Franco Zeffirelli. Or better, he must imagine watching these scenes, because the screen is almost entirely blocked by a black rectangle, as in the illustration above. There is no soundtrack.

The video installation is intended to remain there “forever.” At its inauguration, monsignor Luigi Manganini, archpriest of the cathedral of Milan, said that “the evangelization of the third millennium needs today’s forms of art,” and so the electronic image rightly enters the cathedral “with the same force as the entire history of great painting and sculpture.”

Manganini’s right hand man, Fr. Luigi Garbini, entered more deeply into the substance of the work. From the premise that “the Italian Church is stagnant in its inability to interpret contemporary phenomena,” he explained that “the blocking of 90 percent of the view brings the visitor into a cloud of unknowing, in which he finally faces the free decision: to believe or not believe.”