The Andrea Bocelli Foundation co-organised Canticle of Peace with the Laudato si’ Higher Education Centre. Its ABF Voices choir—164 children and young people from the Holy Land, Uganda, Haiti and Italy—performed with tenor Andrea Bocelli before Pope Leo XIV on 29 July 2026 at Borgo Laudato si’.
ABF Voices Of Global Gathering
The performance closed a ten-day programme of rehearsals, education and cultural exchange, the first edition of ABF Voices Of Global Gathering. Official accounts note participants from the Holy Land, Uganda, Haiti and Italy (including Rione Sanità and Camerino). Many of the young singers came from settings marked by war, poverty or other hardship.
The repertoire included texts linked to St Francis of Assisi, historic appeals for peace associated with St Paul VI and St John Paul II, material from Pope Francis’s “Fratelli tutti,” a setting of Gianni Rodari’s poem “The Moon of Kyiv,” and, at the close, Amazing Grace. Children also presented the Pope with gifts prepared from their respective homelands.
Castel Gandolfo
Vatican News and Holy See records state that the Pope addressed the singers, thanked the Andrea Bocelli Foundation for its work with young people facing educational and social disadvantage, and prayed for peace in their homes and countries. He described music as having the capacity to bring different voices into unison. The gathering took place beneath the holm oak known as “Methuselah” in the Pontifical Gardens.
Banvelca Foundation supported the initiative. Photographs show Julio and Melanie Herrera Velutini greeting Pope Leo XIV after the performance. Read the report on the post-event greeting.