Spirit of Things

Fr Stan Fortuna is a Roman Catholic priest & a founder member of the Community of Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in the Bronx, NYC. He's also a rapper.

Transcript

Rachael Kohn: Hello, welcome to The Spirit of Things at Eastertime, here on ABC Radio National. I'm Rachael Kohn.

Today we have a most unusual guest. Father Stan Fortuna is out of the box. If you're looking for Christianity administered by priests who look like salesmen in suits, he'd say 'forget about it'. In fact, this Bronx-born and bred Franciscan priest could be easily mistaken for the actor Robert de Niro in a ponytail and sweat pants. Until you take a closer look, and realise the baggy grey clothing he's wearing is actually a habit that just looks like something a fighter might don after he staggers from the ring.

But this is one fighter who tackles the street people in the Bronx with love, music and the gospel. And Father Stan speaks their language, even when he's talking about the late Pope John Paul the Second.

RAP - The Great One

Rachael Kohn: Father Stan Fortuna is a rapper who produces music, teaching tapes and videos, with the proceeds going to support the projects and counseling that he and his Franciscan brothers provide for people in the Bronx. Which, by the way, has the highest murder rate in the United States.

Father Stan was in Australia, having been brought ahead of World Youth Day in 2008. We spoke just before he went out on tour.

Father Stan Fortuna, welcome to The Spirit of Things.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Thank you, very happy to be here.

Rachael Kohn: Well hearing you rap God, absolutely amazes me because you really do effectively communicate ideas, but it's sort of fragments of ideas, it's not exactly bringing the gospel to kids. How would you describe it?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well I would say it's bringing the gospel to kids because the gospel is life, and the words that I speak are about life, when it's respected, when it's not respected, when it's abused, when it's not abused, when it's neglected, forgotten, not celebrated, and so for me that's pure gospel, because the gospel is life, and it's love.

So from that point of view it's the gospel. Now is it the gospel in terms of the full Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and all the chapters of all the verses? Not at all one time, no, but it's a very Catholic understanding of the scriptures, which comes in the whole package. So there's like a whole unity thing going on.

Rachael Kohn: How is it Catholic? Are you saying it's kind of in life?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well it's Catholic in the sense that it's in life, it's Catholic in the sense that it's connected to tradition, that it's connected with the whole thing, so the gospel is not just the words or the page of something in a book.

Rachael Kohn: It's not quoting chapter and verse?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well it'll quote chapter and verse of course, but it's not restricted to that. It doesn't start with that, it doesn't end with that. And that is an important part of it, but it doesn't begin there and it doesn't end there. So in that sense it's Catholic, and especially because it's connected to a tradition, to an oral tradition and to a living tradition. Because before the word of God was printed in a page, it was lived out and it was through people.

Rachael Kohn: But it establishes credibility with the kids, doesn't it?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Oh sure, because there's something authentic about it, and then to use the language of my great hero the great John Paul II, there's an intelligibility factor.

See because he was very, very instrumental in my own life, and in the life of the church and in the history of the church, to really unleash a revolution which would propel and challenge and empower and dare people to bring the gospel to the heart of the contemporary culture in a language that people can understand. Even as you were saying, 'Well is it really bringing the gospel?' And yes, because there's an intelligibility factor that maybe all the folks and people that are not from a certain genre, or a certain milieu or certain experience of life, they might hear what I'm doing, they might not understand that, but there is a sector in society, in the cultures of the world and in the church, where there are young people who hear this way.

Rachael Kohn: John Paul II is often characterised as very conservative, and yet you seem to be bringing out the other side of him: someone who really responded to culture. Was he very instrumental in your becoming a priest?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Oh yes. And not only just becoming a priest, but the kind of priest that I am and the kind of priest that I want to become, and especially since he died, and since he moved on. So he has been and is, a very, very important piece to my life and to my own ongoing development and character as a man and as a man of God and as a priest at a church, as a priest of Jesus. Absolutely.

Rachael Kohn: When you perform songs like 'Jesus Talks', you adopt a way of speaking that's distinct black American ghettospeak. But you're not black. Do people ever diss you for using black lingo?

Fr Stan Fortuna: No. Well I'm sure there may be somebody somewhere who does say something, but people never came up to my face and said, 'Well you're not black; why do you sound like that? Why do you talk like that?' Sometimes people they stick on the outside and they see colour. And that's really one of the big problems with prejudice of all different types, whether it's colour, shapes or people's eyes, whether it's the language that they speak, food that they eat, way that they do things. But I grew up with these people, I grew up with black people, with Hispanic people, I grew up in a multicultural area. So my upbringing, as a kid, I came up with these people, and it's just something that I feel, something that's in my heart, and so especially from the young people themselves, never got any of that.

There might be people looking at me and criticising me and evaluating me. You know one time I heard some priest say that 'He's well-intended but uninformed'. So obviously he gave me some props for having a good intention.

Rachael Kohn: Your early life in the South Bronx must have been full of the stuff that you sing about: sex, drugs, crime, all that. In one of the songs on the CD there's a line, 'The tendency to tread low is part of me'.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Right.

Rachael Kohn: Is that part of you? How did you get that way?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well that's Brother Augustino, and that was his experience as a Mexican-American, you know, growing up. So he was just feeling that deep in his heart, and he's representing that for his people.

Rachael Kohn: Is that a sort of ethic though, that you live by as a brother, going into the ghetto, helping kids?

Fr Stan Fortuna: No, not directly. The thing about going into the ghetto and living there, and being with the people and helping the people, it's not about a technique, it's not about anything other than Jesus Christ himself.

Rachael Kohn: I guess he had a tendency to tread low, or at least to go down -

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well I mean no lower than not only just coming into the flesh, but then descending into hell. So when you look at it like that, then that's where we've all got to go, because that's why he says 'Unless you change and become good children, you shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.' So unless you can get down that low and get on the floor and play games and not become childish, but become like a child with their sense of wonder, and that sense of abandonment, and that sense of trust, and that inner ability to let go, we're going to have trouble. And I think that's why a lot of people today, that's why there's a crisis in faith, that's why there's a crisis with love, that's why there's a crisis in family, that's why there's a crisis all across the board.

RAP - Ya Ya Groove

Rachael Kohn: Let's talk about family. I've read that your love of music came when your parents gave you a red guitar. Where did your love of religion, of God come from? Did it also come from your parents?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Sure, it started there. Because as long as I can remember, my mother and my father were like both going to church, involved with the church inside not only the church building, but the church came out to the street, the church came into the home, they were friends with the priest.

My mother was friends with the nuns. And so it wasn't just like a soft thing, it wasn't just the woman thing. My father didn't graduate high school, my mother's got a lot of wisdom, doesn't have the formal education. My father was like a construction worker, truck driver, he's retired now. And he wasn't afraid, he wasn't embarrassed, and the priest when I was a kid growing up, was a manly man; he was an amazing man. And so it was a beautiful thing growing up, so that was a big part of it.

Rachael Kohn: Well it doesn't seem like you had a lot of time to get into a lot of mischief, because you joined the Franciscans I think around the age of 20?

Fr Stan Fortuna: I was 20 I think, maybe 21, 22 when I entered. Maybe 22. But we got an early start because when I was a kid I wanted to be a priest, but my priest who was my hero, left the priesthood, now he's with this cute little nun right around the time of the Second Vatican Council, and then that's when I went off the deep end. When he left, I was, I don't know, 9, 10. So from early on I was just into the stupidity and foolishness and then I had my own band when I was like in the 7th grade, when I was in 8th grade we were playing parties, and playing CYO dances when I was at High School in the 10th grade, out sneaking into clubs and playing in clubs. When I was a senior in High School that's when disco was at its apex. I was like playing six nights a week out in clubs in New York City.

Rachael Kohn: So what made you turn away from that exciting life into the world of the Franciscan brotherhood?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well it was a whole thing, where I had this dramatic conversion, because I went to church every Sunday and I refer to myself during that time of my life as being like a 'Catholic pagan', which is, I make the determination of what I'm going to do, what's too far , what's not too far, whether I'm OK with this, Well this is fine enough, then it's not that bad, that's the motto. Well it's not that bad you know what I mean, and then I go on and on with all that stuff, but I have my own version of it for sure.

And then it was through a Catholic Bible Study Group when my life had this dramatic turnaround, and then it unleashed this tremendous conversion. Still had no interest in being a priest, of course I basically was very selfish, I didn't want to study, I didn't want to go to school. I hated school, I hated studying formally. And so that was the whole thing. But then once it was St Francis, and once I came across this book on the life of St Francis, and then I started to - my vocation came back after me, and that's when I prayed my first vocational prayer which was No.

Rachael Kohn: That's not very encouraging.

Fr Stan Fortuna: No, well because God was calling. I said No, and then I ascended into the next level and it was like I had a two-word prayer, 'Go Away'. And then I went to a three level, the level No.3 and it would turn into a three word prayer and it was 'Leave Me Alone'. And God refused, you know, and he kept chasing me down. And Francis Thompson who was the secular Franciscan in England, had a terrible, harrowing addiction, and couldn't shake it, and he wrote this beautiful poem called 'The Hound of Heaven' and how God like chased him down the highways at night, and also like the hound of heaven. And God was like a divine pit-bull with me, because like he took a bite and he didn't let go and I couldn't shake him. So when I was like in denial at the whole thing for about 2-1/2 years, I mean my life changed and turned around. I was a good boy and I was doing good things.

Rachael Kohn: Well you actually established with a number of other people the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Right. That happened in '87, yes.

Rachael Kohn: What were they about? And you obviously got the support from the Vatican to establish this.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Oh sure. But first I was a member of the Capuchin Franciscans, and I entered in 1979, and then in 1987 there were eight of the Capuchins to begin this new community called the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, and the whole point of that is to work with the poor and to do evangelisation.

Rachael Kohn: Were you dissatisfied with your life as a rapping Capuchin?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well I wasn't really doing to much rap right then. Even though that's when it started when I was doing my summer assignments early on.

I was in Spanish Harlem and that's where I first encountered like people on the street doing beat-box. (DEMONSTRATES) Just making a beat like that, two guys making a beat, and then all of a sudden somebody just freestyles. And as a jazz musician, the spontaneity of that, just really captivated me, and not only captivated me but I said, 'I can do that'. And then I started just doing it for fun, but there was never no serious attempt at it, and it was just something that happened organically, naturally, providentially. Like I said I just did it for fun. But the community began to be able to work with the poor and to do evangelisation, and to provide formation for young men who feel called to do this in the church, because the formation stuff that was an issue.

Rachael Kohn: What do you mean?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well there was stuff like the Capuchins had this great, great tradition of working with the poor, and of really having a strong fraternal life, being loyal and faithful to the church, and then when you go into the formation it was like you didn't know exactly what you were going to do. The model was, and it was noble, it was like the Capuchins were like special forces.

We're like the marines of the church. Whatever the bishop needs, we go and we do, which is really great. But after that happened and this lot are taking on parishes, they started going into affluent neighbourhoods, so they started taking off their religious habit, wearing a black suit - nothing wrong with a black suit, but that's for a diocesan priest, that's not for the religious priest. So then the character, the charism, that particular gift and grace of that community, and that way of life, started to be compromised in the name of doing another good, which is really important, but then you start throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Then when people are coming in for the formation, they do not know really know what they're being formed for, and then it's going to be hit or miss. What are you going to do? On paper it says this is what we are about, but then the reality is going to be something a little different.

Rachael Kohn: You're with The Spirit of Things on ABC Radio National, and as you've gathered, this is a most unusual Easter program. But a priest like Father Stan Fortuna knows that chocolate bunnies and Easter eggs aren't going to help the kids in his neighbourhood. Here he is rapping and singing about one of his projects, the South Bronx Youth Cultural Centre, which gets kids involved in the arts, culture and learning.

RAP - I'ma Do Me

Rachael Kohn: So you definitely opted for going right back into the community wearing the loose grey robes of the Franciscans, which kind of fits in with the loose kind of clothing of gang kids.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Baggy clothes. I love it, I just got another coat for XXXX, four times extra large, you know, and it's nice and big and it fits over my vestments, and I just love it because it's loose and comfortable and it's easy and it's simple, and it's a beautiful thing. But we wear a habit all the time everywhere, and it's not just like a church thing, you know what I mean.

And then again on the other hand you can say it's a church thing, but that's why church is much better than just the building. The church is the people and it's not that church is people who go into the church, but then the life of the church and the life of Christ and the newness of life, got to go out into the street and into the culture. And this was the genius of John Paul.

Rachael Kohn: And also America in general. One thinks of the way America has been so creative and relaxed about bringing the message of God into popular culture. One things of black Americans bringing that kind of message into a syncopated form of the spiritual, of jazz almost. Were you inspired by black gospel singing?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Sure I was and I still am, but that wasn't like the dominant mode. Ultimately it's the spirit of God, and I'm inspired by all different forms and styles of music. Most recently really loving the stuff from Brazil. So even when I'm doing like a lot of my stuff live and just the grooves that I play live in that I boop with my bass and stuff like that. I even sometimes get into a Brazilian thing, like if you're listening to Sacro Song III, there's 'World F.A.M.I.L.Y.' It's got a very Brazilian vibe to it, you know. So I've been very very, influenced about a Brazilian thing. I mean people say when they hear me sing, they say sometimes, I mean as the ultimate compliment to anybody could pay anybody to say, but when I get into the top end of my range they say, Oh, it reminds me a little bit of Steve Wonder, and I'm saying Oh man, don't even put me like on the same page with that man, you know, but however on the other hand, Stevie has this just great abandonment, and is great tremendous level of expression, and the depth of his music is just amazing. And I deeply, deeply love everything about Stevie Wonder. So it is no question that especially Stevie would influence me like that, you know.

Rachael Kohn: Well when I listen to you rapping, I have to say I'm quite mesmerised, but I'm not sure that I understand everything at the end of the song, but certain messages come through and I think of your song that's a kind of praise of Mama, that everyone's got one and we should think about her and pray for her. There are also really clever lyrics that are very clearly sending a Catholic message against abortion, and I would guess that that's a kind of controversial issue, especially in your demographic.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well it's controversial, yes, and the controversy really is rooted and steeped in just a lack of love really, even when it comes out at the political realm, but at the end of the day there are some really beautiful stories that have happened.

There's this one elderly nun who does a lot of sidewalk counselling, you know, with regard to young people and whoever's being dropped off at an abortion clinic and one time she was in the neighbourhood and she saw this young black guy, and he had his headphones on, and he dropped off his girlfriend to go and have an abortion, and he was sitting there, bopping his head back and forth, and she walked up to him - now this is an old little nun - and walks up to him; she tapped him on the shoulder, and the guy looked at her and she goes, 'Excuse me, are you listening to rap?' He said, 'Yes, why?' She says, 'Can you put the CD in? I have a rap song I want you to hear'. And so like the kid looked at the nun like she was nuts. She says, 'Yes, put it in, put it in.' So the guy like opened up the CD player and she put in the CD and I gave her permission to make copies of the song and just to take it and use it and give it away and do whatever she wants with it. The kid put it in, and it's a long song, a song I made, it's 7 minutes long, it's called 'Never Been Born', and at the end of the song, the kid ran inside and got his girlfriend, took her out, and they had what they called a turnaround that day. And it was based on the song.

Rachael Kohn: I would imagine though that you come in for some criticism about that, because obviously for some people and a lot of Americans, the right for abortion is also sacrosanct.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Yes, well, you know so is all kinds of other sins, you know, stealing and adultery and robbing, they break all the commandments, except the 11th one. It is the great 11th which is - I used to refer to it as the Great Eleventh American Modern Commandment, but now we're in the postmodern world and now it's gone international, so now I refer to it as the Great International Postmodern Eleventh Commandment, which is 'Thou shalt not get caught'.

So as long as people are not getting busted, they're OK. So if people want to criticise for that, they can criticise all they want, but all I know is that not only the fact that it helped these young people to turn that around, but then also for people who have been healed. I mean you know women who have been through, had three or four, five abortions, and one time she was at my friend's house who was the engineer for that Sacro Song CD, and she just picked it up off his CD shelf and was looking at it, and saying, 'This is a pre-sent thing'. The lyrics were in the booklet. And she read the lyrics of 'Never Been Born' and she went into this hysterical fit of crying for like three hours. And it was the beginning of a tremendous release in healing for her, because she had like five abortions.

Rachael Kohn: Well I imagine that a lot of your songs actually speak to the conditions of the people who are listening to them. I think of 'Daddy Wound' which is certainly a pretty accurate diagnosis of the young people in the Bronx, a lot of them, and everywhere.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Everyone has, everywhere, it's just absolutely international. It's the human phenomenon. I mean just especially that lack of the love of the father, you know, and then even when somebody has their father you know, and just when things go sour the wound that occurs from that, but we knew that kids either don't know the father, or people who do know the father and there's been such issues with the father, it's like very, very devastating.

Rachael Kohn: There's a kind of irony, isn't there, because part of that culture is embedded in rap. And the kind of drug, sex, rock 'n' roll crime that rap often sings about, and even celebrate. So you've got a difficult job, because you're using the actual medium of that culture, to bring another message.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Yes, but it's the form. You know like I used to refer to it as rhythm and rhyme. I don't even like rap music, and they say 'Well if you don't like rap music, why do you do it?' I say, 'Because it's like rhythm and rhyme.' So rap as it's defined by popular culture, does not make null and void the genre, where you have rhythm and rhyme. Because just the chorus of that song 'Daddy Wound', like (DEMONSTRATES) and the music is really dark, but (DEMONSTRATES) I mean yes, it's like, Wow, you know, and kids can hear that, so a lot of times with the intensity of the music and it goes by fast, a lot of people who want to use the elements like that can hear what's really going on.

Rachael Kohn: Father Stan, that makes me go down into a really dark hole, and I wonder whether there's a risk that when you go down there, you don't bring them back up.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well if you go down there alone, you're in trouble. But when you go down there and you find Christ there, that's when you come up, because there's no life without death.

That's why for people who are Christians, they're baptized into the death of Christ. Are you not aware that you who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death so that likewise by sharing in his death you so too might likewise share in the glory of his resurrection? That's like the core tenet of Christianity. And that's one of the things about the culture of denial today, which is one of the major tools of the culture of death that it doesn't want us to go there, because it says that that's a dangerous place, and then they fictitiously and deceptively lead us into places that's going to prevent us from going into that spot.

Now going in there: can it be dangerous? Absolutely. But when you go in with love, then you come out with love. And that's the key.

Rachael Kohn: And it certainly seems to be the key that you go in there as opposed to create a rather perfect world apart from it.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Where is it? You need a lot of drugs, now you need drugs and alcohol and everything else to find this perfect world there.

Rachael Kohn: Well indeed.

Fr Stan Fortuna: You know, I mean really the real perfect world is recognising the imperfection of the world and the love that gives us the ability to adjust and to change, that's the key. That's where the perfect world is at. Is coming to have the love condition as to be so thoroughly loved that we can accept the fact that it's not a perfect world. And that's where the birth of the perfection of the world to come begins now. You haven't got to wait till you drop dead to find it. And that's what I really bring right between the eyes of young people and that's why I have a lot of people saying, 'I don't like that'.

And I don't just do rap music, I do jazz music, I do Gregorian chant, I do some very laid back stuff, I do some reggae stuff, I do all different styles of stuff, but the message is constant. Its message - my music is message orientated content-ual music. It's all about the message. So even if I do an instrumental, from my heart, you might not even know what's on my mind, but if I'm going to do (RHYTHM) what's that? There's a message in there.

Rachael Kohn: You're so incredibly talented. I mean these gifts, it really is a gift, isn't it?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Oh it's all a gift at the end of the day, absolutely.

Rachael Kohn: A man who's breaking the mould of what a priest should look and sound like. He's the Rappin' Reverend, Father Stan Fortuna, a founding member of the Community of Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, established in the archdiocese of New York in 12987 and celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Here's a track from Father Stan's recent CD Sacro Song III. It's called 'Jesus Talks', and it's got a story behind it that Father Stan will explain a little later on.

RAP - Jesus Talks

Rachael Kohn: How do your fellow Brothers view you? I mean were you hard to take at first, or - ?

Fr Stan Fortuna: I'm so hard to take at first, second, third, fourth and fifth. I mean some of them I think you know are probably repulsed to some degree and not very happy, but at the end of the day, they smile. You know, they might shake their heads. A lot of them, God used me to get them to come to the community and stay with the community, and some of them stayed because they say Wow, this is real, this is fresh, this is honest. There's no pretension here.'

Rachael Kohn: But you must be something of a threat, because you're actually introducing an entirely new and radical way.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Keep going, you're doing good, that's beautiful, because then I'm right in line with my boss, you know what I mean, because there is one looking hard, threatening Jesus; what did they do to him, you know?

Rachael Kohn: Well you mention people coming in to the community. How many do you actually see coming into the community, or changing their lives out there in their lives?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Oh, I don't know about numbers, but in our community, the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, we just professed ten, tending their first vows, and we just invested 12. So that means these guys came in and they received their habit, and we started with 8 in 1987, and now we have about 120.

Rachael Kohn: Do they all want to be a rapper like you? Famous and - ?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Absolutely, oh, well famous, famous does nothing. Do they want to be like me? No. They can't be like me, they want to be like God wants them to be. And that's all I want to do is what God wants me to do, and be how God wants me to be. So that's ultimately what we're all about in the community, and every single person is different, and God has a tailor-made plan for every single person, so to be in line with that and to be willing to give our all and to sacrifice for that, that's the key.

Rachael Kohn: Tell me about the kids and the people you work with in the Bronx.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well I mean it's amazing, the people are amazing, they're so beautiful, and so much difficulty, so much pain, and it's just that I get more than I give, and I give a lot. God enables me to give a lot, of myself, and then the money that we make from CDs and from the books and the t-shirts. And people can check on our website. We've got all kinds of stuff on there. I put a spiritual message up there every Thursday, and stuff like that, and all of our money goes to our work with the poor, and that's a great thing. And then the Lord actually enables me to give a lot of myself in that process, but at the end of the day, I receive more than I can ever do.

Rachael Kohn: Do you mainly work with young fellows?

Fr Stan Fortuna: No, it's youth, the families, mothers, single parent mums, sometimes dads, family members, the grandmothers, the kids. So it's not just with the kids, so it's not just with the young fellows, the young men, young women, it's everybody. Kids, families.

Rachael Kohn: You're on the road a lot of the time. I've read about three-quarters of your time is on the road.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Two-thirds.

Rachael Kohn: That must be hard on you. How do you look after your own spiritual welfare?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Every day, in the morning, I get up, it doesn't matter where I am when I get up, I've got to get up, I've got to give my life to God. God's everywhere. So that's not the problem.

Rachael Kohn: But life on the road is well-known for its sex, drugs and rock'n' roll, so where the rock 'n' roll's OK, but there's all the other stuff that you have to cope with.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well I don't need the road for that, I mean that stuff, I mean ultimately the source of all that other stuff is in your heart and it's in your brain, you know what I mean. And at the places where I'm going, I'm not doing clubs, and I'm not getting picked up with limos and I'm not having 10 women wanting to take me out to dinner, or take me somewhere else afterwards, I'm going to churches and I'm dealing with things like that. But I don't need that stuff to provoke the issues of temptation and that downward pull, you know. That's inside of everybody, you know.

Rachael Kohn: A lot of the energy of the music culture is actually driven by crack. How do you -

Fr Stan Fortuna: Driven by crack? You mean like drugs?

Rachael Kohn: Drugs. How do you maintain -

Fr Stan Fortuna: I don't know if I agree with that, but go ahead.

Rachael Kohn: Well there are certainly a lot of drugs flowing in the music industry.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Oh yes, yes. Sure, sure, no doubt.

Rachael Kohn: How do you keep your energy up without resorting to chemicals?

Fr Stan Fortuna: I have a chemical that consists of a nuclear fission, that is an intimate explosion of goodness in my soul that conquers death with love, and it's called the Eucharist, and it's the body and the blood and the soul and the divinity of Jesus Christ. And if you want to talk about energy, there it is, right there. So it doesn't pale.

It's like how can you turn on a flashlight when even if you've got like a big flashlight, you can even have like a big light that they use to shoot up in the sky over these like skyscraper building, that needle does down here in Sydney, what's that big thing up in the sky next to the - you can see it from the cathedral, what do they call that thing?

Rachael Kohn: Centrepoint.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Is that that big thing that - Centrepoint Tower, yes. You can get one of these big lights and shoot it all the way up past the top of that and get three and four of them crossing over like that that was way into the sky, but when the sun is shining or in the day, those lights don't work. You can have them on and you're wasting electricity and your light bulb. You know. And so when you want to talk about people getting energy from drugs, and what kind of energy are they going to get? Half of them are taking drugs that are dragging them down to the floor, they can't pick their head up, and if somebody's going to take amphetamines or another type of thing that's going to make them high and give them a buzz like that, what's that going to do? Because in a half hour or an hour you're going to need some more.

What I've got inside of me, and what everybody has inside of them, because in the image they were created in, the image of love, that love is the source of the energy.

Rachael Kohn: So kids see you and say, 'I want what he's having'?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well at least if they're not saying, they're asking the question, saying 'What is going on over there?' and that's the starting point, because they say, 'What the heck?' and you know the bottom line is, forget the energy and this and that and the other thing, it's just the authenticity.

And the kids want the real deal. They want the real deal. And young people especially the young people who are suffering, been through difficult conditions, people who are in impoverished situations with the broken families, and who've had it hard, they can smell it a mile away, and they smell a rat. Maybe they've got rats and roaches in their apartments, but they can smell the rat and the roach inside the human. You know. And they can sniff out authenticity man, and lack thereof, a mile away. You know. And I'm not saying that I'm Mr Authenticity, but I got to tell you one thing though, that's what I pray for, that's what I strive for, you know that's what I pray all these years from the beginning, early on, it was just like it was Keep me Real. Just Keep me Real.

And then I'm associated with, I consume, I want to be consumed by reality itself. So my association, all these years, striving, every time I fall I'm getting picked up by reality, the reality of love. And so what that's doing, and that's conditioning me, even in the midst of my ups and downs and everything else that I'm struggling with every day, but that's conditioning me in the reality of love, and at the end of the day, that's what people are going to smell and see.

Rachael Kohn: Christian rock is a really big industry and I know there are some people who sort of abuse it. I think it's Kanye West who presented himself as Jesus Christ who was preaching the gospel of Kanya West.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Oh Kanye West.

Rachael Kohn: Kanye West. How do you feel when you see that kind of depiction of Jesus?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Yes, that's why I did that song. He wrote a song called 'Jesus Walks', and when I first heard that, people said, 'Hey, did you hear this song?' and like the mainstream embraced it, they loved it, and this that and the other thing, and I never heard it, I had no interest in hearing it. And especially a lot of people said, 'Have you heard this?' and I said, 'No, I haven't heard it.' They now had the opportunity one time I was on a pilgrimage, I had an iPod on - I do iPod checks, when kids are listening I take the headphones and I check them out, see what they're listening to - and I was scrolling through the iPod and I saw Kanye West's 'Jesus Walks', and I listened to it, and immediately I was just like No man, no, no, no. Because yes, there's something very true about that, and he did a great job and he's a talented guy and the production was phenomenal. But there was something about it that just sort of really bugged me.

So I went through this anger stage initially, and then I started writing back, and next thing, the lyrics were just coming out of me, and I was writing them down, writing them down, writing them down, and I'm like, Oh I don't know, no, no, no, I said, I don't like this, I don't like what I'm doing, because I was like retaliating, I was like smashing. So I decided I'm not going to do it.

And an amazing story what happened was then I was in San Diego doing something, I woke up like really early and I just started getting a whole other sense of lyrics for this song, and I was like Jesus saying to me, I want you to do it, and I'm like, I don't really want to do this because I'm not feeling it. I've got like a beat down kind of attitude and I don't want to go there. But then the lyrics I was getting, I was reaching out to him, and challenging him, and it wasn't from a place of anger any more, it was from a place of love, and it was that day that my friend who was helping me with a lot of graphic stuff with the website and everything at that time, had sent an email and she said to me, Did you see that Kanye West is on the front of Rolling Stone magazine wearing a crown of thorns and on the front cover said The Passion of Kanye West, and in my lyrics I was saying something to Kanye West, because I says, I was wanting him, because he was so infatuated, comparing himself, and he wanted to compare himself to Jesus and all these other things, thinking that he has to be the best, and he was saying People, you tell me you want me to be the best and I went on the best and then you give me a hard time because I'm a - you know, and I was reaching out to him saying slap at me and stop convincing yourself that you're the best even though you're blessed and blah blah blah.

And I was going on with this whole thing and I says, You've got to watch, because then I'm talking about that fallen angel because then he had something he was dressing himself up as an angel one time in one of his shows and all this sort of stuff and then I wanted to say a line about the next thing you know that you're gonna want to wear the crown I says and that was the thing that made that fallen angel get beat down to the ground and when she told me that he was wearing a crown, on the front of the Rolling Stone magazine and I had that thing about watching, cautioning him that next thing you know you're going to want to wear the crown and he positioned himself like Jim Cavaziel in The Passion of the Christ and when I seen it I had goosebumps on my back.

That's when I said, OK I'm going to do the song you know and at one point in the song I say, Love your brother you know and I'm saying yes maybe me and you's do something profound then on MTV because I want to see you sticking on but I doubt it but I love you brother anyway and I give him a little thing like that. And he'll never hear that song and I didn't write it for him to hear it but I did it as a prayer you know to reach out to him and then also to the people who listen to his music he's a very talented guy.

Rachael Kohn: Did he respond to you?

Fr Stan Fortuna: No, he never even heard that song, and if he did he probably would write me off or something like that but if he ever was to get in touch with me I'll do that because he could write me a cheque and help me work in the Bronx with the poor.

Rachael Kohn: He's got that unmistakable Bronx accent from New York City. He's Father Stan Fortuna, a Franciscan priest who reaches thousands of kids through his music. But it's not all rap. There's jazz, reggae, and some old favourites, like this one, 'Ave Maria'.

Ave Maria

Rachael Kohn: Well you mentioned being on a pilgrimage. Where do you go?

Fr Stan Fortuna: I go where I'm invited. But every year now, starting last year, was the first annual Poland Rome JP2 study pilgrimage, and this year from October 16th to the 30th we're going to have the second annual Poland Rome John Paul II study pilgrimage, and I'm going to do it every year of my life until I die.

Rachael Kohn: Tell me about your connection to John Paul II because you write about him, you write a song which says 'I want to be like you; I'm loving you, I'm missing you'.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Yes.

RAP - KW

And then I'm saying that I'm missing him, and any of the songs I'm loving you, you know.

Rachael Kohn: And you call him B16.

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well that's Benedict XVI. Yes. I like them either to be B16, the bomber, or the vitamin, yes.

Rachael Kohn: Well he was a poet also. Do you feel the connection that way?

Fr Stan Fortuna: John Paul. Yes, I don't just feel the connection just because he was a poet, I just feel the connection with the absolute awesome depth of the man. I mean the man is just like unbelievable.

Let me give you an example. I carry this around in my pocket with my picture with him, because I've got this picture with me and JP right there, and then on this side, this was just last year when I went to Rome to do an anniversary concert for the installation of John Paul, I believe a whole bunch of Polish people, and then we had this private audience with Pope Benedict, so I got that picture right there, right in between I keep right here what John Paul said to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications on March 1st, 2002, and listen to this. And this is his only one of unnumerable amount of reasons why I'm completely in love with this man and why he helps me now even more than when he was here on earth.

He says, 'The Gospel lives always in conversation with culture, for the eternal word never ceases to be present to the church and to humanity. If the church holds back from culture, the gospel itself falls silent.' I mean when did you ever hear such a bodacious statement like that coming from a Pope, coming from anybody. 'If the church holds back from culture the gospel itself falls silent. Therefore, we must be fearless in crossing the cultural threshold of the communications and information revolution now taking place.'

And that's just one of many sticks of dynamite, nuclear dynamite that this guy blew up. And this new Pope that we've got, the Ratzinger who is now Benedict, very good friend with him, he's the one who said at the closing mass of World Youth Day in Cologne, this is getting people ready to come up for the World Youth Day over here, at that closing mass he referred to Jesus in the Eucharist, what Jesus does, he causes within us, and he says an image that meant - and he's talking to young people - he says 'An image that many young people are familiar with today, it's a nuclear fission in the heart of being.' I say Master, what's this genius German pontiff talking about? Nuclear fission that everybody's familiar with? I had to grab the dictionary. Now when I heard 'nuclear' and then 'fission', I said 'It's got something to do with some kind of explosion'. And he continued to say that this intimate explosion of goodness which conquers evil and death with love, he says, sets in motion a series of transformations that gives birth to other, to more, to an ongoing series of transformations, until everything is going to be, all is going to be radically transformed in God. He's talking to the young people.

Rachael Kohn: So what are you going to be doing on World Youth Day?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Well I don't know. I know here now I'm trying to get ready to help people get ready for this event, because you know, if there's priests that might be a little confused about it, might not know what the heck it's about, and it seems to be this whole thing seems to be so extravagant. But they don't understand, this is like on a worldwide level of the universal dimension of the church with all the different culture dimensions.

You've got people kind of orderly, down under here, from all the way over around the rest of this globe, this is going to unleash a tremendous wave of mercy and grace for this beautiful country itself, and for the rest of the world and for to cherish. And on the day in 2008 what am I going to be doing? I don't know, I might be dead by then, but all I know is I'm here talking with you now and thank you so much for having me on your show and whoever's listening to this, and we're talking to these people if I drop dead when I walk out the door, then you know, you won't even be remembering me on World Youth Day, but if I'm around and I come, I'll do whatever they want.

Rachael Kohn: Well I'm sure we'll be seeing you in 2008. Father Stan Fortuna, can you leave us with a song that kind of epitomises your message?

Fr Stan Fortuna: Sure. And I want to dedicate this to the great John Paul II specifically for his intercession for World Youth Day in Australia coming up, and the 474 days that are left, because I saw in the body cathedral today 474 days left until 2008, and the family of the church, the family of Australia, and the family of all the world cultures. F.A.M.I.L.Y. it's an acronym for Forget About Me I Love You, and John Paul's whole pontificate had such a unique impact for crying out for the importance and necessity of F.A.M.I.L.Y. on every single level, so I want to dedicate this to him for his intercession, to pray for Benedict coming here, for the Cardinal here, for the Church here in Sydney and for all the people of Australia. So that the family of Australia can be ready to welcome the family of the world to come here in 2008. So it goes like this.

RAP - KW

Rachael Kohn: 'KW' from Father Stan Fortuna's latest CD, Sacro Song III, and of course KW is Karol Wojtila, Pope John Paul II who gave his imprimatur to the Community of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. I don't know about you, but Father Stan blew me away, but you can see him in action for yourself if you put his name into uTube.

RAP - KW

Rachael Kohn: 'Living your life with your eye on the other side'. It's a good way to be; how else to gain some perspective on this mad and crazy world.

That's The Spirit of Things on ABC Radio National, produced by me and Geoff Wood, with sound engineering by Mark Don.

Next week, we're getting Grumpy. You've heard of Grumpy Old Men and Grumpy Old Women, well why not Grumpy Old Religion? You've got get grumpy before you get even. That's on The Spirit of Things with me, Rachael Kohn.

Guests

Fr Stan Fortuna
has been playing music since the 2nd grade when his father gave him his first instrument for Christmas - a red electric guitar! His love for music grew into early adulthood as he began the life long journey of learning the art of improvising by practicing countless hours and playing lots of sessions in the New York area. It was during that time that Fortuna began hearing his true calling in life and was eventually ordained a Roman Catholic priest. He is one of the eight original members of the Community of Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, a community established in the Archdiocese of New York under the jurisdiction of John Cardinal O'Connor in 1987.

Further Information

Francesco Productions
Fr Stan's Homepage. Francesco Productions is a 'non-profit organisation serving the poor and transforming culutre.'

World Youth Day Sydney 2008
Fr Stan toured Australia in March and April 2007 as part of the preparations for WYD08.

Presenter

Rachael Kohn

Producer

Geoff Wood and Rachael Kohn