Father Spadaro: “In his songs he intertwines human and divine”

“Franco Battiato was absolutely one of a kind, with a strong spiritual rather than religious root in his artistic work. His absolute and complete openness to the dimension of spirituality is a rarity in the Italian musical world”. This is what Father Antonio Spadaro, Jesuit, authoritative and listened advisor to Pope Francis, director of Civiltà Cattolica, underlines to AdnKronos, who with his tweet was among the first to relaunch the news of the Sicilian singer-songwriter’s death on social media. “I was always struck by his ability to innervate his music, his lyrics, his inspiration with the broader spiritual dimension, ranging from Christianity to Eastern religious traditions to Sufi mysticism. His search for a textuality that was an expression of this research was very important, as well as the recovery of tradition, of the deep, existential roots, which also emerged from his Sicily – observes the Sicilian Jesuit. experimentation led him to a spiritual and cultural research which resulted in a musical and artistic research in the broadest sense of the term. And the song ‘La cura’, to which I am personally attached and which I have chosen for my last farewell to Franco Battiato, is a true jewel that reveals its spiritual and artistic depth, intertwining the human and the divine “. (By Enzo Bonaiuto)