Newest Music Star: The Pope

It may come as a surprise that Pope John Paul II, who has frequently asserted the church’s need to be counter-cultural, is the star of a new musical CD and promotional video soon to be released worldwide.

Titled “Abba Pater,” it is the first recording to blend original compositions and arrangements of contemporary music--written by a team of young Italian composers--with live recordings of the pope delivering prayers, homilies and chants in five languages.

“Abba Pater” has 11 tracks that explore themes of charity, forgiveness and reconciliation. The pope delivers prayers and homilies in Latin, Italian, French, English and Spanish.

Officials presented a commemorative gold CD to the pope Wednesday during his papal audience in St. Peter’s Square. Public release is scheduled Tuesday, in time for Holy Week, which begins on Palm Sunday, March 28.

This is not the first time that religion has adopted modern ways to disseminate its message. Evangelist Billy Graham, for example, has long produced motion pictures and, more recently, MTV-type videos, to spread the Gospel. And in 1995 a recording of the pope reciting the rosary was released in seven languages.

Still, Father Pasquale Borgomeo, director general of Vatican Radio, who supervised the production, said that among the first questions he is asked by journalists is whether the church is, in effect, making a deal with the devil. Indeed, a three-minute, 50-second promotional video that accompanies the CD may be screened on some satellite television music channels whose fare has sometimes been anything but sacred.

Journalists, Borgomeo said in a telephone interview from Rome, have wondered if the disc represented “a contamination between rap and pop music and the pope.” They imagined the pope in a recording studio singing with a rock band, he said with a laugh.

Actually, the pope’s words, chants, and singing were retrieved from Vatican Radio’s extensive library of recordings made during his 20-year papacy.

Borgomeo said the church hopes that its joint production with Audiovisivi San Paolo will move Catholics and non-Catholics alike toward a spiritual journey in search of God.

“The best response is an interior one when people reflect and pray on their situation, their duties and their relationship to God, and use the means of music as a way to ease this pilgrimage,” Borgomeo said.

Borgomeo emphasized that the recording must be seen in its proper perspective, just as should the church’s upcoming jubilee in 2000. The idea of a spiritual pilgrimage can and will become an occasion for the promotion of tourism and other commercial ventures. Borgomeo calls these exterior events, as opposed to interior events.

“We are afraid--in this we are with the Holy Father--that the real, the deep, meaning of the jubilee could be lost. It is not just an exterior event. It is first of all an interior event, if you want, a rendezvous of God with his people,” Borgomeo said. Likewise, he said, the recording to be released is “everything but entertainment.”

In one particularly poignant track set against a backdrop of world music, a cantor in the background chants the most holy prayer of the Jewish faith, Shema Yisrael--”Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” The pope is then heard declaring in Italian, “God is not only the father of Israel. He is the father of the world. He is your father. He is my father.”

The pope then breaks into singing the “Our Father.” Clearly his is the voice of an aging pope. But there is lightness in it, even youthful exuberance, as he picks up the tempo, accompanied by contemporary music and the cheers of young people blended in from separately recorded events. His declaration in Italian that God is “your father . . . and my father” is a classic example of John Paul’s rhetorical skills at his best.

“I think the pope has got a hit on his hands,” said Father Gregory Coiro, Los Angeles archdiocesan spokesman, after listening to a copy. “It will surprise everybody that people will take to it.”