A RAP-SINGING, grey habit-wearing Franciscan priest with a funky grey beret is changing hearts in the United States with his songs about chastity, abortion and suicide.
Or as the teenagers attending Fr Stan Fortuna’s concert at the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis put it: “The Spirit is moving”.
Fr Fortuna pulls no punches. He will talk about masturbation, pornography and sex. He knows what these kids are up against.
In his songs, an eclectic blend of rap, hip-hop, traditional and jazz melodies, Fr Fortuna gets to the heart of the matter.
‘All that sin, all that junk, throw it out,’ he said. ‘Got a problem with looking at pornography on the Internet? Fr Fortuna has the solution. Bring the computer into the living room where Mum, Dad or Aunt Lucy passes through.
‘Have a problem saying no to sex? Then say yes to sex.
‘But not so fast. You can only say yes to sex once you say yes to Christ and God’s plan for sex to happen in the sacrament of matrimony,’ he said.
“He is speaking to me,” said Audra MacNeil who travelled to the National Catholic Youth Conference from the US Army base in Mannheim, Germany.
“In Europe, you can pretty well do what you want and there are temptations,” Audra, 17, said. “It was personal. I felt like he knew me and that he was speaking to me and that he understood.”
Fr Fortuna’s songs had teenagers bopping in their seats and soon taking to the aisles to dance. Some said the songs’ messages have pierced through the half-truths and mixed messages from popular culture.
Amanda Bevis, 17, from Littleton, Colorado, knows Fr Fortuna’s music has helped her life.
She never thought too much about abortion or why it was wrong until hearing Fr Fortuna’s song about it. “The song touched my heart,” she said, and led her to pray outside an abortion clinic.
Fr Fortuna told the teenagers he knows they have problems and that many of those problems stem from family breakdowns, such as divorce. But he told them not to let that “get them down”, and to look to the one who can always lift them up – Christ.
They need Jesus in their lives, he said, to battle all that “junk”.
Fr Fortuna has released nearly a dozen CDs and has a new book, U Got 2 Believe, that speaks to teenagers in their own language while making references to Pope John Paul II, the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
He joined the Capuchin Franciscan order when he was 23, later entering the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, an order started by Fr Benedict Groeschel.
Originally from Yonkers, New York, Fr Fortuna, 43, would sneak into night clubs to play bass guitar when he was a teenager.
He called himself a “pagan Catholic” when he was growing up, defining it as someone who would go to church on Sunday but wasn’t living the faith.
It was a book on St Francis that got him interested in his faith and soon he began attending a Bible study and found that the life he was living wasn’t that appealing any more.
However, he took his guitar and his passion for singing with him into the monastery as preaching tools.
CNS
