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St. Augustine apparently said that singing is like praying twice. This is why the Fundación Ramón Pané of Spain, with the support of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communications, has launched the Catholic Music Awards as a way to encourage the faithful, especially young people, to evangelize and connect to their faith through new and uplifting music.
“May the 'Grammys' of the Church during the Holy Year be a complete success!” Honduran Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, archbishop emeritus of Tegucigalpa and president of the Fundación Ramón Pané, said with a smile at a Vatican press conference introducing the awards on September 27, 2024.
In fact the awards ceremony is scheduled for July 29, 2025, during the Festival and Jubilee of Influencers in Rome and the Youth Jubilee. Making these events coincide seemed “natural,” the organizers explained, as it will help the music to gain visibility and spread physically and digitally.
At the press conference, the organizers launched the official website of the Awards, where musicians from all over the world will be able to submit their works. Artists will be able to submit material from November 1, 2024, to March 5, 2025, in over 20 different categories ranging from “best female singer” to “best song for catechesis” to “best music video.”
The jury that will evaluate their work will be made up of experts who will evaluate the musical content and technique, but also the Catholic message.
Brother Ricardo Grzona, executive director of the foundation, shared that the idea for these awards was born because many young people "wanted to express their prayer through music" but found that in the Catholic Church there wasn't as much attention or support as in other Christian denominations.
"The Church needs to evolve to take her place as the patroness and sponsor of all the arts,” he said.
Cardinal Maradiaga: Music is an important language for young people
“I am a church music enthusiast and for young people it is a language that they understand immediately,” the 81-year-old cardinal emphasized, sharing how he was encouraged to take musical training by his superiors when he was a novice in the Salesians, and then became an instructor himself. “For me any antiphon or any piece of Gregorian chant is a precious prayer,” he shared with Aleteia, explaining how he had the opportunity to learn Gregorian chant and then teach it to others.
“Music is a language, and an especially important language for young people. They can speak different languages but music unites them and this, especially when thinking about synodality, is a new horizon,” Cardinal Maradiaga said.
Young people “can unite with other young people across the world in search for peace, for justice, in search for true love, and music is a language that can help.”
“In our globalized world music continues being a universal language that transcends borders,” he added.
