Evangelizing through music:
Father Mimmo Iervolino, Priest and Singer
By Pasquale Lubrano

Here is an interview with Father Mimmo Iervolino, a priest working in one of the most difficult areas of Italy, in Pomigliano D'Arco, near Naples. He uses the guitar and songs as instruments to get across his message.

A most moving moment for him came at San Remo in 1999, when he sang in the Ariston Theatre there. His music covers a wide range of styles, including rap and Christian dance music. Many young people are fans of his. Father Mimmo's dream is to create "a place for God" in today's music. Let's look at how he tries to do this.

Father Mimmo, music and religion - how do they mix?

Music has always been present in my life, ever since I was a child. You find it in creation, in the flowing of a river, in the wind that blows through the leaves, within yourself where you feel part of an everything that is larger than you and where you discover you are a fragment that can express that everything. So there's no conflict between music and religiosity. To make music and enrich the works of the immensity that envelops you is all one reality. It's one song.

The people you live and work with are simple people, who live a life that often is not easy. Some of the young people are out of work or are victims of drugs or organized crime. How do they react to your vocation, which is both religious and artistic?

Both the adults and young people are happy, at least those I have met so far! A song is a vehicle that can give something. It encloses fragments of life, truth, joy and suffering. It's an immediate way to give what you are experiencing, seeing, feeling. Young people in particular are in tune with "feeling," because they are at that stage in life where they are discovering their senses and so songs can say a lot. Once a young man said to me at a concert: "God works in an hour." A thousand homilies would never have opened his heart the way those songs did.