Church leaders pay tribute to Leonard Cohen

Church leaders have paid tribute to the songwriter Leonard Cohen, who has died aged 82. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, tweeted lyrics from "Hallelulah", a song replete with biblical references.

I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah (#LeonardCohen)

— Gianfranco Ravasi (@CardRavasi) November 11, 2016

Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane called Cohen "one of the voices of the age".

Cohen was profoundly Jewish & therefore biblical but one of the voices of the age - very old & always new. Work that out; he sure did.

— Arch Mark Coleridge (@ArchbishopMark) November 11, 2016

The news of Leonard Cohen's death was announced on his Facebook page. Fans gathered outside his home in Montreal last night lighting candles and laying flowers. Though Jewish, Cohen lived as a Zen Buddhist monk and tried Scientology. His interest in Catholicism, he once said, derived from an Irish nanny who raised him "part Catholic".