"Top of the Pops" for France's singing priests

"Holy voices singing eternal hits" goes the commercial for the album that is currently taking France by storm.

Move over Lady Gaga. Sorry Black Eyed Peas. And tough for homegrown French talent such as Christophe Maé.

This week's best selling album here in France is none other than "Spiritus Dei" by a group called "Les Prêtres".

Given the name, there are no prizes perhaps for guessing that the group is made up of two real-life priests, Jean-Michel Bardet and Charles Troesch and a seminarist, Dinh Nguyen Nguyen.

A Boys Band with a difference, if you will, and the brainchild of the Bishop of Gap in the southeast of the country, Jean-Michel di Falco.

Now at this point you might be thinking that the album is an ecclesiastical blockbuster - so-to-speak - of hymns or, at the very least, religious music.

And while it's true that you'll find recognisably spiritual tracks such as "Ave Maria", "Ave verum corpus" or the French Christmas carol "Il est né le divin enfant", the trio also decided to tackle some modern standards, which perhaps accounts for the popularity of the album.

There's Jacques Brel's "Quand on a que l'amour" which has been covered by innumerable artists down the years including inevitably perhaps Céline Dion.

The album also includes a version of "Amazing Grace", Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is given an airing and there's "L'envie d'aimer" from the appropriately-named 2000 French musical "Dix Commandements".

All right so the idea might not have been entirely original and Bishop di Falco freely admits that the inspiration for the album was the success of the similarly-named Irish counterparts "The Priests".

It came during a brainstorming session he had with a close friend, the popular 1980's French singer Didier Barbelivien, as to how to raise funds for a school in Madagascar and the construction of a church in the diocese.

After suggesting making an album, Barbelivien then contacted TF1 Musique, who apparently "loved the idea", the Bishop went about recruiting in his diocese and....well the rest is history.

A platinum disc for sales of more than 100,000 copies in France, an appearance on a popular national television show and now a number one album.

Of course the whole success has been helped by the backing of TF1, this country's most-viewed private TV channel, which has regularly aired a clip of the very album it produced.

While surprised by the popularity of the album, the Bishop remains suitably modest about reaching top spot in the charts.

"Naturally we're very happy but at the same time we don't really understand what it all means," he said on national radio.

"But what I can say is that we've been receiving around 30 letters a day for the past couple of weeks from people expressing how much joy and hope the album has given them," he continued.

"And that in itself has to be a sign that the whole project fits in with our calling."

Riding on the wave of success, a series of concerts has also been scheduled in three cities around the country in May and June...in churches of course.



Clip France Bleu "LES PRETRES - SPIRITUS DEI"
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