The spirit of the Catholic aggiornamento: architecture, dialog and active participation 1. In December 8th 1965 ended the Second Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church (1962-65) at the Vatican City State. The meeting aimed, in the words used by Pope John XXIII, the aggiornamento of the Catholic Church. A new perception of the world (Weltanschauung) and the purpose to adapt the tradition of the Church to the new conditions of our time, led to a change of the paradigm of the ‘church temple’ to ‘the house for the people of God’. 2. In an article of 1972, the Jesuit priest Antonio Lopes (1926-2007) recalls the ‘dream’ of Karl Rahner (1904-1984) where the Christians of the future would be ‘Christians in the diaspora’. In line with the conciliar conception of a ‘poor’ Church, in service to the world, the Jesuit priest asked: ‘is it our pastoral action yet addressing a society that is vertiginously dissipating or that has already disappeared in many sectors? As opposed to the cyclical return of a symbolism excessively monumental - over bound to the ‘object’ and with an ambiguous sacredness - emerges the priority of the ‘living assembly’, the place for the openness to the ‘Other’, endlessly close and endlessly different. 3. The aggiornamento purposes of the Second Vatican Council is the context where it comes to light the opportunity to explore an ‘elective affinity’ between the Christian works of the non-Christian dutch architect Aldo Van Eyck (1918-1999), Italo-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) and the film director Pier Paoolo Pasolini (1922-1975). It will be questioned in their works, taking into consideration the particular nature of their liturgical conceptions and to the cultural and ideological environment that informed them - the prospective characters of: ‘corporality’, perceiving the body as a relational instrument with the world; ‘hospitality’, by organizing the space openly; and ‘circumstance’ conceiving the space as a place for the bystanders.

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architecture,dialog and active participation