
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.”