Pope Benedict XVI greets the faithful. Photograph: Alessia Pieromenico/Reuters

The pope plans to meet up to 500 artists from around the world in November as part of efforts to turn the page on the Vatican's sometimes troubled relationship with the contemporary art world.

The Vatican said the gathering, to be held at the Sistine Chapel on 21 November, was intended as the first step towards a "new and fertile alliance between art and faith". The director of the Vatican museums, Antonio Paolucci, said it was hoped it would mark a sort of "reconciliation after the great divorce".

The invitation list includes artists from five continents, ranging from painters, sculptors and architects to poets and directors. The guests were picked regardless of religious, political or stylistic allegiances, said archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

About 75 artists have already agreed to attend, including the Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone and the avant-garde US stage director Bob Wilson.

The event will mark both the 10th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's "Letter to Artists" in 1999, in which he spoke of the church's "need for art" in painting, architecture and music, and the 45th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's original meeting with artists in 1964.

Pope Paul VI, whose papacy ran from 1963 to 1978, had a passionate interest in contemporary art. He was responsible for inaugurating the Vatican Museum's department of modern religious and contemporary art in 1973, which

The collection, often overlooked by tourists, includes works by Auguste Rodin, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall.

But works such as Martin Kippenberger's crucified frog, Zuerst die Füsse, and Paolo Schmidlin's Miss Kitty – which portrays the pope in drag – have soured relations between the faithful and the contemporary art world in recent decades.

Schmidlin's sculpture was withdrawn from an exhibition in Milan two years ago after the Catholic Anti-Defamation League expressed outrage and threatened to seek charges against the show's organisers for defaming a head of state.

But the rupture between art and faith was "incomprehensible", given the extensive prior collaboration between artists and the church, not least during the Renaissance, Paolucci said.

In a sign of efforts towards a reconciliation, the Vatican earlier this year said it would participate in the 2011 Venice Biennale, one of the world's major art festivals.

At the time, Ravasi ruled out opening a Biennale pavilion alongside more provocative participants, but underlined the "necessity of dialogue" with artists in the "absence of a contemporary language of sacred art".