Religious tourism and the new evangelization: theory and best practice in the pastoral promotion of the Church’s cultural heritage

Abstract

This case study correlates religious tourism with the new evangelization of the Catholic Church. It addresses the Church’s involvement with contemporary travel by communicating the Christian faith. Here, two methodical guidelines are presented: the ‘framing of religious tourism’ in its evangelizing context and the ‘reframing of secular mass tourism’ within the Church’s anthropological view of man. The article’s first part (nos. 2 − 4) deals with the reasons why the Catholic Church promotes her artistic heritage as a pastoral tourist product. This is because she is aware of the original cultural setting of the heritage which requires also a religious communication. The second part (nos. 5 − 6) explains how the Church’s evangelizing promotion could have a pastoral influence also on secular tourism by providing a framework of Christian anthropology. The analysis of ‘best practice’ in the third part (no. 7) examines six international cases of this approach: Grande Museo del Duomo in Florence, Baroque churches of the Philippines (UNESCO World Heritage List), Catechesis through Christian art by a Diocesan Office in Florence, European federation ‘Ars et Fides’, Santiago de Compostela as ‘European City of Culture’ in the year 2000 and the ‘Holy Week Celebration’ in León (Spain) as a tourism event.

Keywords

• Religious tourism
• new evangelization
• Christian art
• sacred architecture
• cultural heritage
• catechesis through art
• leisure and free time