The Pope and the hit parade

John, Paul, George, Ringo — and John Paul II

Charlotte Metcalf

07 November 2007

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A musical DVD starring John Paul II is released this month

Messina contacted Boswell and did a deal with Sony. Filming and composing began but two months later John Paul fell ill and died. When the DVD could not be ready six weeks after the Pope’s death Sony pulled out, believing that interest in John Paul II would be bound to fade after he died. Messina and Boswell took the idea to Warner Bros, Fox and Universal in the US. ‘Everyone turned us down,’ says Boswell. ‘People we met loved it but someone high up always said no.’

Refusing to be disheartened, Messina invested E400,000 in the DVD, a sum he describes as a ‘nice risk’, given there are 1.1 billion Catholics worldwide and if 1 per cent of them buy the DVD, they will have sold 11 million. Finally, persuaded by the logic of the economics, Universal picked it up and is now releasing the DVD globally.

For such a potential phenomenon, the packaging looks tawdry. Cheap paper inserts flutter from the plastic casing that shows a blue sketch of John Paul praying. ‘Deliberately accessible to all,’ Boswell justifies it. He laughs but the cheap packaging gives no indication of the calibre of the music within. For John Paul’s funeral sequence, Boswell produced an exquisite requiem, using the Schola Choir from the London Oratory School. We see the plain wooden coffin and hear John Paul intone: ‘It’s very simple. The synthesis of what I have said is contained in a no and a yes. No to egoism.’ The list continues and ends, ‘Yes to justice, love and peace. Yes! — your duty to build a better society.’ Boswell’s soaring music lifts this near-platitudinous message into the realms of the profound. It is undeniably moving.

No wonder Monsignor Slawomir Oder, head of the canonisation process, is so pleased with the DVD. I ask Messina what Pope Benedict himself thinks. ‘We don’t know exactly but he has a copy and we plan to meet him — perhaps when the DVD hits number one in time for Christmas,’ he says.

‘I always wanted to be bigger than Michael Jackson and now we could have the biggest number one ever,’ twinkles Boswell. ‘That would be a Christmas miracle, wouldn’t it?’ Of course, choosing Boswell was no miracle but a worldly, wily decision made with a shrewd eye on results and publicity. When challenged about Boswell at the Italian press launch, the Vatican representative Don Giulio Neroni happily replied, ‘Jesus loves a sinner.’ Ironically, a British sinner may provide the decisive shove in the JPII canonisation process.