The 16th International Festival of Sacred Music and Sacred Art, promoted by the Fondazione Pro Musica e Arte Sacra, recently took place in Rome, Italy. This year about 700 performers from Japan, the Vatican City State, Germany, the Russian Federation, Austria and Italy took part in the event, confirming it as one of the world’s most anticipated and important sacred music festivals, in which the participants have a unique opportunity to “lift their gaze on high and be receptive to all that is good and the beautiful.” Like every year, internationally renowned musical groups, first and foremost the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (the Festival’s “orchestra in residence”), performed the most famous masterpieces of sacred music in extraordinary settings, such as the Patriarchal Basilicas of Rome.