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The world is saying goodbye to Pope Francis. The 266th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church died at the age of 88-just one day after Easter Sunday, on which he donated the blessing Urbi et orbi on St. Peter’s Square one last time. Francis, bourgeois Jorge Mario Bergoglio, shaped the Catholic Church with its modesty, his social engagement and his tireless efforts for the poor and delimited. In addition, the Pope repeatedly revealed a deeply human side – for example by talking about the love of music.
Pope Francis: This song touched him the most
Pope Francis accompanied a special song for a lifetime: the Christmas carol “Silent Night”. In 2018 he explained during a visit to Austria: “In his deep simplicity, this song lets us understand the events of the Christmas night. Jesus, the savior who was born in Betlehem, reveals the love of God’s Father”.
The song commemorates many of their own childhood, simple moments of security and the message of hope and peace, which essentially constitutes Christianity.
A Pope with a sense of classical music and Italo-pop operas
In addition to popular and religious music, Francis also had a deep veneration for classic compositions. Johann Sebastian Bach in particular was taken with him. The Pope once described his works as “sublim” and “unsurpassable”. The complexity and at the same time spiritual depth of Bach’s music impressed him. Especially in Bach’s compositions, Francis saw a kind of musical theology – a sound world that expresses the size of God in a unique way.
In 2022, the Pope was observed how he secretly left the Vatican to visit a record store in downtown Rome and went out with a classic CD in his hand. Business owner Letizia Giostra then told the Italian newspaper “Corriere della Sera” that his visit to the surprise was “a huge joy”. She added: “The Holy Father is a passionate music lover and was our customer years ago when he was still cardinal and came through Rome. Of course we never saw him again. And now he came to us to say ‘Hello’.”
Cardinal Ravasi also published a photo in 2022 of the “musical material” that he had received from the Pope in the run-up to the famous Italian Sanremo music festival. The recordings included a record with Bach’s Johannespassion, a CD with Adam’s lawsuit by the minimalist composer Arvo Pärt and an album of the opera-pop trio IL Volo.