"The church hosting us is shining with the gold that tells us the precious story of God's love for humanity; soon, it will enshrine the magic interweaving of music and words that will reveal something of life's great mystery." Standing in front of the altar of the Shrine of St. John Paul II in Krakow, the President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, thus introduced the concert with Andrea Bocelli, on May 27, in new step in the project "The Great Mystery. The Gospel of the Family, School of Humanity for Our Times." Accompanied by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Maestro Marcello Rota, and by the young Hungarian violinist Anastasiya Petryshak, the tenor performed a repertoire representing a journey through references to the human and religious dimensions of love, in a dense course marked by joy and gratitude, from Handel's Alleluia to Lecot's Jubilee Hymn, and also including Rossini's Stabat Mater, Schubert's Ave Maria and Verdi's Va pensiero.
"The beauty of art and music—Msgr. Paglia continued—offer us this evening a privileged way to discover Amoris Laetitia, the joy of love, which binds a man and a woman, parents and children, young and old—let us pray that the world's nations may also learn each day to build the family of peoples." Therefore, he stressed, "this love wants to be sung, in its stories, with its nuances, in the drama that generates it and the passion that sustains it." In the Sanctuary built in honor of the Polish Pope, the President of the Pontifical Council turned his thought to Wojtyła: "Dear Pope John Paul, tonight we are here, in this new church dedicated to you, to sing the beauty and the joy of love. You wanted to be remembered as 'the Pope of the Family;' you first have sensed the decisiveness of the question of the family in the Western world, sick with loneliness and self-centeredness."
Archbishop Paglia entrusted especially young people to the intercession of St. John Paul II: " we truly care about their desire to love and to be loved forever; and we want them to free of their fear and from the temptation of believing that genuine and joyful love is in fact impossible. I like to think that, during the days of the next World Youth Day which will take place right here in Krakow in a few weeks, you will look on them from heaven together with Piergiogio Frassati, a young man who was not afraid of the joy of loving and whom you yourself, calling several times the man of the eight beatitudes and officially declaring him Blessed, held up as a model for all to follow. It's beautiful to know that heaven is inhabited by people who are young (in spirit and in age) with a big heart."
"Today—said Msgr. Paglia, thanking Maestro Bocelli and the Archbishop of Krakow, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz—today you will give us the opportunity to appreciate all the harmonics of love, because you will make us feel the power of the joy that supports the destinies of the universe and that, in the events of each family, is revealed, precious, fragile and small, yet always invoking the eternal."
