Spiritual Desolation Can Strengthen Us If We Listen to God At his regular weekly public audience on October 26, 2022, Pope Francis spoke about the role that desolation plays in the process of spiritual discernment. On one, the Pope said, desolation can be a sign of “the change from a life oriented towards vice can start from a situation of sadness, of remorse for what one has done.” He quoted St. Thomas Aquinas, who classified sadness as a “pain of the soul,” which helps someone to recognize the need for reform. On the other hand, the Pope continued, desolation can be a temptation for someone who seeks to do the right thing; in that case “sadness is an obstacle with which the tempter tries to discourage us.”
“We must not remain defeated by a moment of sadness,” Pope Francis said in his Wednesday general audience about desolation, continuing his discussion of discernment.
academy of art, in the visual arts, institution established primarily for the instruction of artists but often endowed with other functions, most significantly that of providing a place of exhibition for students and mature artists accepted as members. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, a series of short-lived “academies” that had little to do with artistic training were founded in various parts of Italy. The most famous of these was the Accademia of Leonardo da Vinci (established in Milan c. 1490), which seems to have been simply a social gathering of amateurs meeting to discuss the theory and