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I am really very pleased to attend the inaugural act of the Santarém Diocesan Museum.

I thank Lord Bishop D. Manuel Pelino for the invitation he addressed me to attend this ceremony and view this beautiful and recently renovated Cathedral and to evince this so important moment for the Diocese, for the City of Santarém and for our Country.

This is the crowning moment of a vast project for the recovery of this Cathedral and of a sizable heritage of paintings, sculptures and jewellery, which do not belong to this Cathedral or even to this city.

It was a large and praiseworthy effort that mustered all the parishes of the Santarém Diocese.

I thus congratulate the Lord Bishop of Santarém for the decision he took to go forward with this ambitious undertaking, which was also necessary to ensure the preservation of the very rich heritage that was bequeathed by the generations that preceded us.

It was a decision that demonstrated courage, vision and an enterprising spirit, and that greatly contributes towards the cultural enrichment of the city of Santarém.

One of the most relevant features of the project which is being launched today, was exactly the will and the capacity shown to salvage works of art with untold value and which are being given back to the people in their new home.

Added to this work of cataloguing and conservation of the heritage is the concentration of parish records, which have an inestimable value for the study of the History of the peoples of the region of Santarém.

I also want to congratulate the Mayor of Santarém for the decisive impulse given by the County Council towards the construction of this equipment, which is also the city’s first museum, when providing the indispensable framework for the community co-financing of the project.

This undertaking is framed within a wide and notable effort for the recovery and refurbishment of the main monuments in this capital city of Gothic architecture. This objective, which the County Council clasped, calls upon all the city’s inhabitants, on behalf of the regeneration of the historic centre and of local and regional development.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
This is the first project completed within the scope of the Route of the Cathedrals initiative. It is a joint effort between the Government of the Republic and the Portuguese Episcopal Conference, aiming to promote the recovery and the conservation of patrimonial values with profound historical and cultural significance that cathedrals preserve within them.

Portugal can and must be proud of the notable heritage it received from its History of almost nine centuries.

Portugal’s cathedrals are marvels of architectural genius and witnesses of man’s trust in the divine. As meeting points over past centuries and centres of spiritual fluorescence, they are privileged exhibits of the intimate lien that lies between devotion and art.

Live treasures devoted to divine cult. They are the age old signs of human cultural and artistic progress that we have the duty to preserve.

Their recovery and conservation, alongside their integration within a structured project of cultural and touristic promotion of our Country, are very positive steps that I salute and due to which I congratulate the Secretariat of State for Culture and the Episcopal Conference.

It is important that this challenge is taken on by all the Country’s Dioceses and that Portugal takes advantage of this Route of the Cathedrals as a strategic asset for local and regional development, associating it with a cultural programme and with the dissemination of the identity of the peoples that built these temples.

Lord Bishop of Santarém,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I end with a very sincere and special congratulatory message for this day’s event and to how the Diocese celebrates this occasion.

The commissioning of a musical composition – the Cantata Mundi – to celebrate this inaugural act effectively shows us that, more than celebrating the past, we are promoting nowadays the best that we can achieve.

Cultural production is very much alive. Art continues to happen. And, more than the ephemeral moment of this ceremony, the memory of this day must rest upon our pride in the mastery, the talent and the art of the Portuguese.

Thank you very much