Reflections’ was a triumph

By Fr Robert Christo

Vicar for Communications

When cultural icon Roy ‘Papa’ Cape passed away September 5, 2024, few could have predicted the ripple effect it would have—not only in the music world, but in the Catholic Church’s mission of evangelisation.

With the many attendees expected of mixed faiths—and some skepticism about the Church’s ability to “rise to the occasion”—I sensed that the request for a Catholic funeral was made with caution.

Roy had grown up at St Dominic’s Children’s Home, a place run by the Dominican Sisters, and that small tie opened a wide door. We knew this was not the time for lukewarm liturgy or bare-bones ritual. This was a moment for the Church to be alive, embodied, and visibly radiant. And that’s exactly what people said happened.

With full liturgical planning, sacred music, the “breaking of the Word,” and every sensory element of the Church brought to life, we celebrated not only Roy’s life, but the glory of God working through art and culture.

Government ministers, musicians, well-wishers, thousands of online viewers, and regular folk wept—not from sadness alone, but from an unexpected encounter with grace. One attendee whispered afterward, “I didn’t know the Catholic Church could feel so alive and real.”

From that powerful liturgy, conversion began to unfold. One of the artistes present—a Soca queen with Catholic roots—felt a deeper call to produce a Gospel album, choosing to release it during Carnival as a countercultural act of witness.

Destra Garcia’s Palm Saturday concert, Reflections, at Queen’s Hall was a triumph of praise, healing, and unity. The very choir that sang at Roy Cape’s funeral was reconfigured and named ‘One Love’. From funeral to festival, a movement was born.

At the concert, people came dressed in white, hands lifted, voices raised, saying “Amen” in ways that echoed the Upper Room. And there I stood, as a Catholic priest, blessing the choir with holy oil, knowing we had stepped into the mystery Pope Francis so often speaks of: the Church must “smell like the sheep” and walk among them. We had done just that.

Of course, not everyone is called to this mode of evangelisation. But the Church must recognise it, affirm it, and support it wholeheartedly as part of her wider mission.

This is precisely what Gaudium et Spes, the Vatican II document on the Church in the modern world, urged us to do: to be present and alive wherever humanity is searching for meaning—including the stage, the street, and the dance hall.

This is not just about a concert or a funeral. It’s a Jubilee call. A Bethlehem star has arisen from the heart of local culture, and the Catholic Church must keep stepping forward—into Queen’s Hall, into Carnival, into the ‘Savannah Gras’ into unexpected sanctuaries of grace.

If not, our palms will dry up and the stones cry out. Our witness will fade into ashes. But if we move—into music halls, dance halls, onto social media, into the heart of culture with joy and conviction—then, like Roy’s saxophone, our faith will sing again. This, perhaps, could be a glimpse of St John Paul II’s Church in the Modern World.