You might imagine that Vatican officials would only listen to Monteverdi and Palestrina. But Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Holy See’s foreign minister and incidentally the highest-ranking Briton in the Vatican, has revealed another side to ecclesiastical taste.
According to a Times preview of the BBC’s forthcoming Inside the Vatican documentary, those passing underneath the archbishop’s office over St Peter’s Square might hear the strains of Sweden’s best-known musical export. Archbishop Gallagher is seen “cranking up Abba”.
Early reports on the documentary don’t reveal what song was playing in his office.
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Should clergy take to the skies in their battle to protect their flocks? It’s a question the Russian Orthodox priest Alexander Goryachev has already answered in the affirmative. He and his local bishop went up in a helicopter this year to pour 70 litres of blessed water over the city of Tver. It marks the Orthodox “Day of Sobriety” and is meant to drive out attachment to sin.
It is reminscent of Colombian Catholic bishop Rubén Montoya’s action early this year, sprinkling holy water from a helicopter over the port of Buenaventura.
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