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Award for Fr Shay Cullen

Award for Fr Shay Cullen Columban Father Shay Cullen of PREDA, www.preda.org , will receive the International Irish Person of the Year Award in Dublin on 13 September. This is one of the categories in the People of the Year Awards. The ceremony will be televised live on RTÉ, the Irish national broadcasting service, one of the sponsors.

Father Cullen has been working in Olongapo for many years now with children and women who have been sexually abused.

His weekly Reflections are published in newspapers and magazines in a number of countries and appear each week in www.misyononline.com/misyonforum in Father Cullen’s Corner. Your comments there
will be most welcome.

The People of the Year Awards, which celebrate ‘Irish talent, bravery
and fortitude’, began in 1975 and have been televised
for more than twenty years.
34

‘Mozart Diplomacy’

The late Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth once said, ‘It may be that when the angels go about their task praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart.’ Pope Benedict relaxes by playing Mozart on his piano.

Diplomatic relations between the Vatican State and the People’s Republic of China were severed a long time ago by the latter. Catholics in China have endured great difficulties. Some Columbans who worked there were jailed after the Communist takeover in 1949 and all were eventually expelled. But in the last three decades the situation has been gradually changing.

An example of this was the Mozart concert given on 7 May in the Vatican for Pope Benedict by the China Philharmonic Orchestra and the Shanghai Opera House Chorus.

The Vatican-based Agenzia Fides, www.fides.org, carried this report on 17 June.

‘What has most inspired us all is the response and comments of the Holy Father regarding our performance’: Conductor Yu Long, Director of the China Philharmonic Orchestra, says in an interview on the Concert at the Vatican.

Beijing (Agenzia Fides) – Over a month after the performance in the Audience Hall, given by the Chinese musicians, in honor of the Holy Father Benedict XVI, the emotions and impressions of that historic day continue touching people’s hearts, especially that of Conductor Yu Long, Director of the China Philharmonic Orchestra. The conductor was interviewed by the journal The Beijing Evening News. The interview was later published on many Chinese sites, with his photo, even by the influential official government site, Chinanews.

Proud to have ‘participated in a piece of history,’ in this ‘ice-breaking event,’ Conductor Yu Long confirmed his great devotion to the Holy Father, as well as his feelings on the event. ‘What was most moving for me, was the response and commentary of the Holy Father on our performance. He said that it had been the best rendition of Wolfgang A. Mozart’s Requiem that he had ever heard. His comment goes beyond that of any religious leader. I see it as that of a master.’ ‘We had prepared Das Lied von der Erde by Gustav Mahler, but in the end we decided to go with Mozart, as a tribute to the great expert in Mozart that Benedict XVI is and to show our respect and love (towards the Pope) through a cultural approach and recognition, as well as to demonstrate Chinese cultural dignity. We want the world to see Chinese culture, in this way showing China’s openness.’ Because it is ‘only in opening our hearts, coming into contact with the world, that we can unveil a totally new China.’

Responding to the questions on his experience of performing before the Pope, the conductor said: ‘What made me most nervous wasn’t so much the performance, but the speech. I had prepared so many drafts with beautiful words and lots of rhetoric. But at the last minute, I decided to leave the text aside and to say what was in my heart, using simple words.’

A Zenit - www.zenit.org – report the day after the concert quoted Pope Benedict: ‘There is another aspect that I wish to emphasize. I note with pleasure the interest shown by your orchestra and choir in European religious music. This shows that it is possible, in different cultural settings, to enjoy and appreciate sublime manifestations of the spirit such as Mozart’s

Requiem which we have just heard, precisely because music expresses universal human sentiments, including the religious sentiment, which transcends the boundaries of every individual culture’.

Clearly this concert is part of the ongoing dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Chinese authorities, a variation on the ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ that preceded the USA’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China in the time of President Nixon.

But it is the beauty of Mozart’s music that is the key. Real beauty, in whatever form, ultimately comes from God and leads to God. And maybe it’s no coincidence that Mozart was from Salzburg, Austria, the most beautiful city your editor has ever visited. I was there twenty years ago when it was spring, not yet hot but not cold, the sun shining but the snow still on the surrounding mountain-tops. The movie version of The Sound of Music was shot largely in that area.