There’s been some social media / website coverage of the Catholic Music
Awards 2025, with English-language commentators looking puzzled and
saying "Who?" "What????" no matter which side of the
rad-trad / dippy-hippy / contemporary-cool triad they sit on.
Nominations are listed here:
https://catholicmusicawards.world/nominees-finalists-in-english/ and category winners are going to be announced tomorrow, 27 July -which
is pretty much mid-summer and slow-news-time in Europe. You
can find out about the awards ceremony on their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/catholicmusicawardsworld).
They really are structured like secular music awards with categories for
best male and female singer, new singer, album, music video, engineered song -
along with, in no particular order:
- Best Liturgical Song
- Best Praise-Worship Song
- Best Evangelization Song
- Best Marian Song
- Best Catechesis Song (Tradition, Doctrine and Magisterium)
- Best Parish Choir
- Best Pop Song
- Best Tropical Song
- Best Group (Band) or Duo
- Best Urban Song
- Best Rock Song
- Best English Song
- Best Production Song
It looks like this is music for life, not just for religion that's just kept
in church.
Who is behind this?
The awards have been announced on Vatican News
(https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2025-07/finalists-announced-catholic-music-awards-2025-grammys.html).
This tell us the awards are
from an idea of the Fraternity and Fundación Ramón Pané headed by
Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga and Brother Ricardo Grzona,
and
consolidated [I'm guessing meaning conceived]as a reference for artists and communities that promote Christian values
through music, with an intercultural and multilingual vision.
The Fundación Ramón Pané - aka Ramón Pané Foundation
Inc (https://fundacionpane.org/) is an evangelisation training organisation, founded in 1994, to mark the
500th anniversary of the first missionary to the Americas, viz Ramón
Pané (more about him here: https://fides.org/en/news/69211-AMERICA_DOMINICAN_REP_The_hermit_who_evangelized_America_Ramon_Pane. It's based in Florida, and I'd guess Spanish is the lingua-franca
and world-view basis of most members - but they routinely translate to
English, Italian and Portuguese.
Does it make sense?
The CMA awards, whose name may or may not be deliberately similar to the
very-traditionally-minded Catholic Church Music Association, will
certainly raise awareness of the Foundation: I'd never heard of it, or of Ramón
Pané, until I went to learn about the awards. But it's certainly
good to know about the first missionaries to any country - and I've now
learned why people used to call Native Americans "Indians".
The music in their nominations list is in a genre which is helpful to
the communities where I pray - though I've not heard of most of the specific
songs that have been nominated, and I've more aware of Pacific and Celtic
songs/composers , rather than ones from The Americas or the Caribbean
countries.
But even I recognise that the the music is not catholic (small c, aka
Universal), and it does not even begin to represent the breadth nor depth of
music used in Roman Catholic lives or churches. Either this is both
the first and last Catholic Music Awards - or the scope will be
increasingly widely!
Watching the awards ceremony
I did have the video linked, but its now private. Will add it back if that changes.
In most categories, there are separate winners for each of English, Spanish,
Portuguese, Italian.
This feels like a Spanish pop-music awards ceremony. English language songs and singers aren't going to be winners here. But Spanish-language organists and polyphonic choirs aren't even in the room.
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