Why, Pray Tell, Would Anyone Ban the Pope’s CD?

I have never heard the pope on the radio. I’ve heard practically everybody else. Pop singers and pop psychiatrists. Gospel and soul. Rock ‘n’ rollers and holy rollers. But never the pope. I’ve heard the Singing Nun, Judas Priest, the Rev. Al Green and a couple of women who were en route to the Chapel of Love. I’ve heard John and I’ve heard Paul. Just not plain John Paul.

Now that he’s got a new CD out, however, the pope deserves a little air time.

Come on, fair is fair. If compact disc jockeys can play Madonna, they certainly can spin the pontiff’s platter. It’s fresh off the Vatican bandstand.

The way things are going these days, hearing the pope on the radio could do us all some good. (Or, like chicken soup, it couldn’t hurt.) We’re forced to listen to so much nasty, evil, violence-inciting music--like, oh, John Tesh’s (just kidding)--that the least we can do is plug Pope John Paul II’s greatest hits album.

I was raised in the Roman Catholic faith. On my radio and TV long ago, Bishop Fulton Sheen was a big star. I can’t remember him singing, but once the bishop did give a stern tongue-lashing to Joseph Stalin and some other Commies. He concluded his broadcast by warning, “Stalin must one day meet his judgment.” A week later, Stalin croaked.

I vowed there and then never to get on any bishop’s bad side.

Anyway, this new CD called “Abba Pater” features John Paul in a multilingual mix of rhythms and hymns. It sounds good to me, although I haven’t heard it.

You could have heard it, by the way, on KIEV radio, Glendale, a few weeks ago.

At least until somebody pulled the plug.

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I have Paul Volpe on the line. First-time caller.

Volpe is a part-time radio personality who, on the air, goes by the alter ego “Kaptain Kaos”--which, now that I think back, might also have been Stalin’s nickname.

Paul is a big fan of John Paul.

He has even been communicating with a Vatican secretary, Father Angelo DiBeradino, lately, trying to explain why he believes KIEV radio took him off the air a few weeks ago, the instant he began to play the pope’s CD on the air.

It happened just prior to Easter Sunday. Kaptain Kaos normally was on the air once a week, usually on Fridays, commencing at midnight. His two-hour program is--was--called the “Cutting Edge Subterranean Music Show,” which specialized in playing music from all over the world.

“I often have students in the studio with me, guest DJs,” says Volpe, who had been doing the show for 3 1/2 years. “School kids as young as 8 and as old as 18, from every culture I can find. We might have Korean kids in, Chinese kids, European kids. We have kids from Compton in. We try all kinds of music.”

Salem Communications, a Christian broadcast group, bought KIEV a few months ago. And on March 23, according to Volpe, a station executive told Kaptain Kaos of a policy change--there would be no more music in foreign languages.

Radio stations always alter their formats. I personally wish all stations that air Rush Limbaugh would use only personalities who speak in foreign languages, but we don’t always get what we want.

Nor did Kaptain Kaos.

Not a Catholic but a devoutly religious Christian, Volpe is the son of a Glendale man who helped construct KIEV’s original transmission tower. He is as devoted to his radio program as he is to his faith. However, he was not a full-time KIEV employee. He bought time there to be on the air.

Having paid for ads saying his program would play Pope John Paul’s CD as soon as it was released, Volpe did just that on his March 26 show. He opened the show with “Abba Pater.”

An engineer cut it off. KIEV went to dead air. The control booth was closed, and Volpe says a signal was given--a finger across the throat--to inform him his show was over. Permanently.

“I had kids with me,” Volpe says. “They were confused. They were crying.”

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Kaptain Kaos has retained attorneys and filed a lawsuit. A station executive contends that Volpe was fired for using profanity on the air, which the DJ denies profusely.

Meanwhile, he’s been asking everybody’s advice on what he should do. He asked the student DJs. He asked his cousin, Whitey Ford, the old New York Yankee baseball pitcher.

He even contacted the Vatican.

“Let me tell you something,” Kaptain Kaos says. “The pope isn’t happy about this.”

And you thought that bishop was tough.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com