Pope Francis picks Patti Smith for Christmas show
Holy holiday surprise!
It appears that punk-rock pioneer Patti Smith will make an especially high-profile December concert stop in Italy, at the invitation of Pope Francis, before she performs at San Diego's Balboa Theatre on January 31.
According to the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera and the International Business Times, Smith is one of the artists invited to perform at the Vatican's annual Christmas concert next month. The event, known as the Concerto di Natale, will take place Dec. 13 at Auditorium Conciliazione and will be televised live on Italian television.
The concert will mark the first, and presumably last, time that Smith will share a concert stage with Italy's singing nun, Sister Cristina Scuccia, the winner of this year's edition of the Italian TV version of "The Voice." Sister Scuccia's recently released first single is her version of Madonna's "Like a Prayer."
French DJ Bob Sinclair (whose name doesn't sound very French to us) is also on the bill for the Vatican Christmas concert, as is Cleveland singer CeCe Rogers. If all of this sounds like an early April Fool's prank, well, guess again.
The Vatican-sponsored concert is the ninth stop on Smith's 10-city December tour of Italy. Pope Francis and Smith briefly shook hands last year when she visited St. Peter's Square in April, 2013.
Meanwhile, Smith's Dec. 9 concert in Naples has been attacked as potentially blasphemous by the Catholic organization Portosalvo, which specifically objects to the spoken line that opens "Horses," Smith's landmark 1975 debut album. The line in question is: "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine."
"I can still believe in Jesus as a revolutionary and I think the positive things he did resonate in a positive way," Smith, who was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, said in a 2012 U-T San Diego interview.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/nov/14/pope-francis-tabs-patti-smith-for-vatican-concert/
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