Religion: Vatican Program Notes

The concert in the Vatican's sleekly modern audience hall was decidedly ecumenical. On the podium was Leonard Bernstein, who recalled during rehearsals the "deeply touching" response accorded by Catholics to his controversial Mass. At last week's "unrefusable" appearance, he conducted the Harvard Glee Club and the Newark Boys Chorus in a program ranging from Bach's Magnificat to Bernstein's own Chichester Psalms, sung in Hebrew. The occasion was an annual concert that this year coincides with the tenth anniversary of Pope Paul VI's accession to the papacy.

But the Pope's anniversary was marked by other ecclesiastical notes as well. One was an extraordinary...

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