From the visit to the record shop to the Rock album and to the message for Sanremo

Pope Francis, who left us today at 88, will also be remembered as one of the most sensitive popes to the musical cause. “I am sure that good music likes God …”, it was one of his funniest phrases, pronounced on an official occasion, receiving Chris Martin, the Coldplay singer.
On the other hand Jorge Mario Bergoglio, from a young age, has nourished a deep passion for tango – symbol of Buenos Aires – but also for liturgical singing and popular sounds. As a Pope, he welcomed some of the greatest artists in the world in the heart of the Vatican, receiving them in public and private hearings, praising their talent and underlining the social and spiritual value of music.

Once Francesco also gave a practical demonstration of his interest. It happened in January 2022, with its rare unofficial visit outside the Vatican: an incursion to the stereosound Roman record shop. Pope Bergoglio came out with a mysterious CD and the owners refuse to reveal what he was.
It was an almost unique event in the history of the pontificate. But apparently, once Jorge Bergoglio was a true record of records. “He came here before becoming Pope, when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires and was visiting Rome,” said Tiziana Esposito, one of the owners of the shop, who about the incursion in 2022 added: “It was perhaps twenty minutes here, just the time to have a chat. It was a very exciting honor. He is an extraordinary person, a simple but wonderful man”.
As for the CD, Esposito said it was a “gift” and added: “I will not tell anyone what it was.” But it is known that Francesco prefers classical music. In 2013 he told Catholic civilization: “I love Mozart, of course. His 'et Incarnatus est' is unsurpassed, he takes you to God. I like to listen to Beethoven. And then the passions of Bach – Sublimi”.

Not only that: Bergoglio has even released a pop-rock album. “Wake Up”, released in 2015, used rock sounds, but also pop and Latin American sounds, to relaunch words spoken by the pontiff during speeches and public hearings with the aim of “conveying the love of God and his peace to each person”. The album “Wake Up!” It was made up of eleven tracks that overlapped passages of the Pope's most famous speeches inside. The musical side of the operation had been edited by Tony Pagliuca, founder in the sixties of Le Orme, who claims to have tried to recreate atmospheres as much as possible in line with the emotions expressed by the pontiff in his interventions.

Staying in the musical field, in 2023, Pope Francis had received the participants in the “Christmas Contest”, a music competition linked to the Christmas concert, to which he had addressed this thought: “Composing music is a metaphor for life, in which we need both to tune in harmoniously with others, with society and with its laws, and to give space to the originality of the way of being and expressing each other”.
Finally, only two months ago Pope Francis had spoke surprise, with a video recorded in his apartment at Casa Santa Marta, during the first evening of the Sanremo Festival, immediately before the performance of the Israeli singer Noa and the Palestinian singer Mira Awad, who duetted on the notes of “Imagine” by John Lennon. “Music can help the coexistence of peoples. It is a language that all peoples, in different ways, speak and reach everyone's heart. Music can help the coexistence of peoples”, said Bergoglio, then adding: “Music can open the heart to the harmony, to the joy of being together, with a common language and understanding, making us engage for a more just and fraternal world”.