By Steve Weatherbe

DESPITE all his best efforts to avoid a calling, God pursued Father Stan Fortuna.

The so-called ‘Rappin’ Reverend’ cited Hebrews 4:12, to sum up how the sovereign Lord wore him down – and drew him into the Franciscan order.

Fortuna, who was preaching and singing May 9 – 11 at a conference for youth of the Catholic diocese of Victoria, said he fought God’s call for “two-and-a-half years of bob-and-weave.”

The process began when friends persuaded him, as a young jazz musician, to join a Bible study.

“I  was very uncomfortable. I was threatened by all the love in the room.” Not just the love, but the truth in scripture, left Fortuna thirsting for more.

He was also resisting the call he heard inside himself. On the outside, “I was saying ‘No, no, no’ –  but to no avail. “It was indisputable: God was calling me.”

Now Fr. Fortuna does the calling – to young people, to parish retreats, to conferences of clerics, ad-libbing his testimony into street music and rapping delivery.

“Kids want to know the truth,” he said. “They want to know if they can trust the church.” He said the postmodern era has brought with it “a huge amount of information – but also skepticism. The more information we have, the less we know.”

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It’s a challenge – and an opportunity – for Christianity, he stressed, since kids are young enough to still believe in the truth and to want “an encounter with it.”

Teenagers are also encouraged by the culture – and are naturally inclined – to want “an encounter with love.” But there are many false, “impoverished forms of love” being offered, he cautioned, which confuse people.

On the second day of the retreat, after tuning up his electronic bass guitar, the grey cassocked, dark-bearded priest sang and spoke passionately to several hundred youth about the love which calls us “70 times seven times” to forgiveness. “God is love, so love created us in love’s image,” he sang.

On The Zipper Zone, he rapped: “Save sex for marriage, you can beat the disease / Don’t wait to fall on ya back, to get down on ya knees / Thank God for your body, pray for self control.”

Fortuna belongs to the Franciscans of the Renewal, a small but growing order whose habits are grey to distinguish them from the traditional brown of older Franciscan orders. He was one of the founding members of the order – one of several begun during the time of Pope John Paul II – which adheres to traditional disciplines of chastity and  poverty.

As it expanded from its original base in New York to London, Honduras and Africa, Fortuna assumed more responsibilities – until finally his preaching mission was recognized as a separate job. This relieved him of many of his other functions.

Now all his earnings from his preaching and CDs go into Francesco Productions, and thence to the order’s various missions to the poor.

June 2008