Next year's World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, where Pope Francis' planned Mass is expected to draw as many as 1.5 million people from around the world, will showcase an original hymn penned by a Wisconsin priest.continue at JS
Not bad for a debut effort.
The Rev. Andrew Ciferni, who heads the Center for Norbertine Studies at St. Norbert College in De Pere, co-wrote the event's official hymn, "Sound the Bell of Holy Freedom," with fellow priest and friend the Rev. Normand Gouin of the College of Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.
The song debuted last Sunday at a Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia.
And Ciferni heard it for the first time on YouTube the following morning.
"It was wonderful. I had goose bumps," said Ciferni, a Philly native who penned the text without ever hearing Gouin's music.
The text verses seem nice, the refrain is confusing. Holy Freedom would be freedom from sin, the freedom to do something good and virtuous, but not "freedom" in the American sense which equates basically to "a license to act in any way I see fit."
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