VATICAN CITY—The long tradition of Vatican patronage of the arts has given rise to such monuments to Christianity as St. Peter’s Basilica and Renaissance masterpieces including the Sistine Chapel.

Under Pope Benedict XVI, the Holy See is seeking to revive its cultural role, with plans to mount its own pavilion at the 2011 Venice Bienniale, the premiere international contemporary art festival, and start a “dialogue” with contemporary artists that hasn’t existed for decades.

“We are reminded of the urgent need for a renewed dialogue between aesthetics and ethics, between beauty, truth and goodness not only by contemporary cultural and artistic debate, but also by daily reality,” said Pope Benedict XVI, in a November message to pontifical academies.

Monsignor Gianfranco Ravasi, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the aim is to re-establish links with the contemporary art world for the benefit of both art and faith.

“The great religious symbols, the great stories and the great figures of spirituality—these can stimulate an art that more and more often lacks any message”—or is blasphemous, Ravasi said in a recent interview.

Ravasi also hopes to inspire art that is appropriate for the many modern churches built in recent decades by such noted architects as Renzo Piano and Richard Meier.

The Venice Bienniale has featured the world’s greatest artists who exhibit in “pavilions” that are erected by individual nations.

In 1920, Cezanne, Matisse and Van Gogh were on display; the 1948 edition featured Dali, Ernst, Kandinsky and Miro; 1977 saw Rauschenberg, Mondrian, de Chirico and Picasso. In the 1990s, Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde-encased cow made an appearance. And more recently, Cy Twombly, Richard Serra and Joseph Beuys exhibited works.

Yet, the Vatican’s decision to participate in the event is unusual, in part because the once-every-two-years art fair has incurred the wrath of church authorities for work that religious leaders considered a sacrilege.

In the Bienniale’s very first edition, in 1895, the Patriarch of Venice, who later became Pope Pius X, asked the mayor of Venice to ban the exhibit’s most talked-about work, Giacomo Grosso’s “Supreme Meeting.” The work featured a coffin—representing the demise of Don Juan—surrounded by naked women. Religious leaders feared it would offend the morals of visitors.