Brisbane singer-songwriter Peter Pellicaan in the music video for Listen, a new song for the Plenary Council 2020. Photo: Plenary Council/YouTube.
The first screening of a new music video for the Plenary Council 2020 was witnessed by hundreds who gathered in Brisbane for the 2018 PROCLAIM Conference on 15 July.
PROCLAIM, the biennial national evangelisation conference, this year has a particular focus on the Plenary Council process and how it can help renew the Catholic Church in Australia.
The song, Listen, was composed and performed by Brisbane singer-songwriter Peter Pellicaan, who said the track draws on many of the key themes of the Plenary Council.
“The song was composed as a call to the Church in Australia to listen to what the Spirit is saying as we prepare for the first Plenary Council since 1937,” Mr Pellicaan added.
“The song invites people to listen to God, but also to reflect and ponder on what it would mean for the Church to look like Jesus.”
Mr Pellicaan said the song contains a number of pointers to the Catholic Church’s heritage in Australia, including the use of the didgeridoo and bagpipes to reference local and international roots for the Church.
Plenary Council facilitator Lana Turvey-Collins said Listen, which also draws on an inspirational homily from Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge, has great meaning, but also fits in comfortably with modern popular and Christian music.
“When we think back to World Youth Day in Sydney, the song that was written for that occasion became synonymous with that remarkable event,” she expressed.
“Peter’s song might, in a similar way, become a musical message that helps people engage with the Plenary Council in another way. Like the World Youth Day song, Listen captures the essence of an event, namely that we are being called to ‘Listen to what the Spirit is saying’ to the people of God in Australia.”
Ms Turvey-Collins said she has heard that other people are thinking about how the power of music and song can form part of their input into the Plenary Council.
“Different people express their faith in different ways and, for many, song is a medium through which they can speak to the Church and to the world.”
Mr Pellicaan said Listen was not written specifically for use within the liturgy, but rather as a preface to the Council’s Listening and Dialogue sessions as “a call to imagine, to reflect and to listen”.
Click Here to access the lyrics and music.