With New Chapel, College Answers Many Questions.

It is hard to decide what is most remarkable about the new chapel at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., that will be dedicated on Sunday: the art, the architecture or the idea of such a chapel in the first place. First, the art. The Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik is a Jesuit priest and artist from Slovenia who founded the Centro Aletti, a place of study, work and prayer established in Rome to build bridges between faith and art and among Christians of long-divided rites in Eastern and Central Europe. Visiting the center in 1993, Pope John Paul II was so taken by Father Rupnik's paintings, which seemed to fire the forms of ancient icons with intense modern color, that he invited the priest to create mosaics for a papal chapel in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]