“Amoris Laetitia” Is Becoming a Cantata

Making Pope Francis’s Post-Synodal Exhortation Amoris Laetitia into a cantata for vocal recitation by solists, with a choir and orchestra—this is the initiative sponsored by the diocese of Cremona that will begin in the cathedral of the Lombard city at the end of April. “Letizia d’Amore, Stelle e Precipizio” is the title given to the exhortation’s sung version, which is the result of the poetic genius of Davide Rondoni combined with the musical genius of Federico Mantovani.

“An extemporaneous and intriguing idea—as Msgr. Antonio Napolioni, Bishop of Cremona, received it—to present love as a great gift from God to humanity.” This is a musical and poetic approach: “Emotional languages,” he observes, but at the same time they are powerful tools to “make the listeners understand that love is not the perfectionism of some but the labor of all.”