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The Conversation
The Conversation
Virginia Raguin, Distinguished Professor of Humanities Emerita, College of the Holy Cross

What a sunny van Gogh painting of ‘The Sower’ tells us about Pope Leo’s message of hope

Vincent van Gogh's 'Sower at Sunset' painting. Vincent van Gogh/ Kröller-Müller Museum via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC-SA

In his first general audience in Rome, Pope Leo XIV referred to Vincent van Gogh’s painting “Sower at Sunset” and called it a symbol of hope. A brilliant setting sun illuminates a field as a farmer walks toward the right, sowing seeds.

Leo referred to Christ’s Parable of the Sower, a story in the Gospel that speaks to the need to do good works. “Every word of the Gospel is like a seed sown in the soil of our lives,” he said, and highlighted that the soil is not only our heart, “but also the world, the community, the church.”

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