‘‘I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I wasn’t standing here,” Bruce Springsteen said on November 8, 1996. The crowd cheered; they knew what he meant. Thirty-three years after graduating from St Rose of Lima School, Springsteen was back in his hometown of Freehold Borough, New Jersey; back in his alma mater’s gym on a Friday night. “Right under the cross, too,” he joked – although it was delivered with more than a hint of truth. So goes Springsteen’s Catholicism: sincerity coupled with sin. The iconic rocker with a dizzying list of accolades – 20 Grammys, an Oscar, a Tony, untold devoted fans – was back at the place that most formed him. Yet he never truly left. “In Catholicism, there existed the poetry, danger and darkness that reflected my imagination and my inner self,” Springsteen wrote in his 2016 memoir, Born to Run. More than anything else, the tension of Springsteen’s Catholic upbringing – and its complex resonance through his life – has sustained his art. Letter to You, released in October 2020, is Springsteen’s most spiritual album yet, and reveals that he is one of the essential contemporary Catholic artists. The St Rose of Lima concert perfectly captured Springsteen’s brand of Catholicism: visceral, penitential, profane. A charity concert on “The Ghost of Tom Joad” solo tour, the $30 tickets were capped at 1,300: packing the gym with only borough residents. The money went to the school’s Hispanic centre, meant to help low-income families. Residents brought their families, and they sat next to priests and nuns – some who taught Springsteen years earlier.