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Pope Francis Music Album To Be Released: From Gregorian Chant To Rock-N-Roll

By Dawn Papple
Published on: 16:48 PST, Oct 3, 2015

Pope Francis is often heralded as being hip with the times, but imagine Catholics’ surprise when a song featuring His Holiness premiered on Rolling Stone‘s website. Vatican Radio announced that a new album that combines a variety of speeches spoken by Pope Francis with many different styles of music, reportedly from Gregorian chants to rock-n-roll, will be released at the end of November. The album is entitled Wake Up! and features 11 tracks.

Pope Francis’ new album merges excerpts of His Holiness speaking in different languages. The first track, which was featured on Rolling Stone‘s website, uses a speech Pope Francis delivered in South Korea. The album can be pre-ordered from iTunes.

Pope Francis is wildly popular, as seen in the images of his visit to the United States, where people lined up to catch a glimpse or maybe touch his hand.

Pope Francis speaks English, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese on the new music album.

“Giorgio Kriegsch (also known as Nirvanananda Swami Saraswati), Tony Pagliuca, Mite Balduzzi, Giuseppe Dati, Lorenzo Piscopo, and the orchestral director Dino Doni” among others all contributed to the Pope’s new music CD, according to Vatican News which also listed the titles of all the tracks on Wake Up!:

1. “Annuntio Vobis Gadium Mangum”

2. “Salve Regina”

3. “Laudato Sie…”

4. “Poe Que’ Sufren Los Ninos”

5. “Non Lasciatevi Rubare La Speranza!”

6. “La Iglesia No Puede Ser Una Ong!”

7. “Wake Up! Go! Go! Forward!”

8. “La Fa Es Entera, No Se Licua!”

9. “Pace! Fratelli!”

10. “Per La Famiglia”

11. “Fazei O Que Ele Vos Disser”

The album has been approved by the Vatican, and the speeches featured in the music are considered among the Pope’s most essential speeches. They all touch on critical “universal principles,” according to the Vatican, like children, family, poverty and the environment and should be considered a sort of historical document, reportedly. The Pope Francis music CD will be released by San Paolo Multimedia/Believe Digital. In it, the Pope can be heard telling his audience, “No one who sleeps can sing, dance and rejoice,” and he urges the audience to wake up and go.

“For many years, I’ve been the producer and the artistic director of albums by the Pope. I had the honor to work with John Paul II, Benedict XVI and now Pope Francis,” producer and artistic director Don Giulio Neroni told Rolling Stone. “As in the past, for this album too, I tried to be strongly faithful to the pastoral and personality of Pope Francis: the Pope of dialogue, open doors, hospitality. For this reason, the voice of Pope Francis in Wake Up! dialogues music. And contemporary music (rock, pop, Latin etc.) dialogues with the Christian tradition of sacred hymns.”

According to Rolling Stone magazine, the first Pope born outside of Europe “has reignited a Catholic base and inspired millions outside his own religious denomination with his selfless, unifying messages that encourage climate change protection, assistance for the homeless and his hope for equality for all, even in the case of hot-button issues like same-sex marriage and immigration,” and now he has a new music album that looks like it’s going to actually be a hit!

[Photo credit: Catholic Church of England/Flickr]

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