What connects a renowned Benedictine reformer, the first Cistercian pope and a 21st-century American pop singer? St Bernard of Clairvaux, Pope Eugene III and Gracie Abrams may appear an unlikely triumvirate at a dinner party. Choosing the right soundtrack might be a struggle. Yet each figure, totemic in his or her own field, plays a surprising but effective role in the sermons of the week-long Lenten retreat preached by the popular Norwegian Bishop Erik Varden to Pope Leo XIV and the assembled members of the Roman Curia at the Vatican.