FRAY RICHARD:

Rap With a Touch Of Soul: In Guatemala, a Man Of Both the Collar And Backward Ball Cap (Teresa Wiltz, December 14, 2002, Washington Post)

The thing is, he doesn't even like rap that much. As he sees it, it's filled with sin: violence, naked women, drugs and greed. Stuff that a priest is supposed to renounce. But if you're a padre, like Fray Richard Godoy, and you want to save souls, and those souls happen to be hooked on hip-hop, then, if you're smart, and young, and know your way around a beat, maybe you'll get over your repugnance and find yourself bustin' a rhyme. In your robes. Arms up. Raising the roof.

For Latin America's most popular -- and possibly only -- rapping priest, this makes for a complicated relationship with an art form about which he's got mixed feelings. [...]

At 33, he is of the hip-hop generation, but his is not the hip-hop experience.

Or is it?

Someone, he says, has to use the powers of rap for good.

Why not him? [...]

[F]ray Richard, El Rapero de Dios (God's Rapper), may very well be the first ordained Catholic priest to grab a mic and shake it, shake it, shake it -- all in the name of J.C., Jesus Christ.

One envisions the good Father in a remake of Going My Way... Posted by Orrin Judd at December 14, 2002 11:16 AM