c. 1999 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ First came the best-selling book, then the golden disc and now _ a papal”rap.” The Vatican is issuing”Abba Pater,”a compact disc on which _ for the first time _ Pope John Paul II speaks over a musical score, delivering homilies and reciting prayers and psalms in five languages in a sacred equivalent of secular rap.

The Rev. Pasquale Borgomeo, the Jesuit director general of Radio Vatican, presented the first copy of the CD to John Paul Wednesday (March 17) at his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square.”Very nice,”the pope said.

Sony Classical will start distributing more than 1 million copies of the CD worldwide next Tuesday (March 23) with help from national bishops conferences.”We hope sales will exceed that many times over,”Peter Gelb, president of the recording company, told a Vatican news conference.

Judging by past successes in marketing the pope, Gelb’s prayers should be answered.”Crossing the Threshold of Hope,”the pope’s written replies to a reporter’s questions about his personal beliefs, sold well over 3 million copies in the year after its publication in 1994, while an album of the pope reciting the rosary became a golden disc.

Borgomeo said the CD is intended to help the world’s 1 billion Roman Catholics undertake the”interior pilgrimage”the pope has invited them to make in preparation for the holy year 2000, which will open the third millennium of Christianity.”It has great pastoral value,”he said.

The CD contains 11 tracks in which the pope speaks in Latin, Italian, French, English and Spanish on such universal themes as charity, forgiveness and reconciliation. His texts include his own homilies, Psalm 26, the Gospel of John, passages from Exodus and Matthew, a poem attributed to St. Francis of Assisi and the Beatitudes from Matthew.

They were chosen under Borgomeo’s supervision from Radio Vatican’s vast collection of broadcast recordings of John Paul’s voice made at the Vatican and during his world travels over the more than 20 years of his papacy. The voice is that of a still vigorous man, not yet blurred as in recent years by the effects of Parkinson’s disease.

One track has been made into an MTV-style promotional videoclip, in which the pope chants the”Pater Noster”(“Our Father”) against rapidly changing shots of a naked but decorously filmed Adam and Eve, an African baby nursing, African children singing and dancing and John Paul hiking across a deserted countryside, embracing a young child, descending from an airplane and celebrating mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.

It is a video that”could surprise some people, enchant others,”Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, president of the Vatican Committee for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, said.

The score is the work of Leonardo De Amicis, 36, and Stefano Mainetti, 42, two Italian composers with extensive television and film experience, who have drawn on sacred, classical, contemporary and ethnic music from Africa, Latin America, India, China and Indonesia.

Praising the”great artistic value”of the CD, Gelb said,”I hope that this record will be a cultural milestone for the record industry and hopefully for the Vatican as well.” De Amicis said he and Mainetti used a computer to examine the rhythm in which the pope spoke and chanted but did not manipulate his voice. He said the strong intonation and regular rhythmic cadence of John Paul’s voice made their work much easier than it might have been.

The two-year project originated with a proposal to Radio Vatican from the Rev. Silvio Sassi, director general of the Apostolic Works of the Pauline Fathers, Borgomeo said. The order’s Audiovisivi San Paolo is one of the world’s largest audio-visual publishers on religious topics.

But the Italian wire service ANSA quoted two other Italian musicians, Fabrizio Consoli and Andre Mariotti, as saying the idea originated with them in 1997. They said the Vatican pulled out of the collaboration after several months and won a court case blocking them from broadcasting any of the work they had completed.

Borgomeo called making the CD”a delicate and risky operation,”but said it was a”natural prolongation of the daily task of Radio Vatican _ to carry the voice of the pope to the world.” No one involved would discuss what Borgomeo described as the”massive investment”involved. Gelb said Sony would provide”a kind of normal artist’s share”to Radio Vatican and Audiovisivi San Paolo, and its offices in each country will decide terms for the help of the national conferences of bishops.

Radio Vatican will use its share to make up some of the loss at which it regularly operates while Audiovisivi San Paolo will re-invest its returns in other projects, Borgomeo said.

Gelb said the price of the disc will differ by country, but it will be sold at Sony’s top price”because it is a record that we are very proud of and we’ll be releasing it as what we call a front-line recording.”

DEA END POLK