ROME, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Usually, Italian tenor Andrea
Bocelli sings for people, but this time the Franciscan monks in
Assisi sang for his supper as they feted the international
superstar on his 54th birthday.
Bocelli was in Assisi along with U.S. singer Dionne Warwick
and other artists to sing at a benefit concert on Saturday night
organised by the Fetzer Institute, a non-profit U.S. group whose
mission is to promote peace and forgiveness among peoples.
When the monks found out that the date of the concert
coincided with Bocelli's 54th birthday, they invited him to
partake in a spartan dinner in the refectory of their
basilica-convent complex - a Franciscan tradition of
hospitality.
"We, along with Saint Francis, want to praise the Lord for
the gift of Andrea, for the gift of his life and of his
witness," Father Giuseppe Piemontese, the custodian of the
Sacred Convent of St Francis, said in his toast.
"May St Francis accompany you," he told Bocelli, who has
been blind since the age of 12 and burst on the international
music scene at the San Remo song festival 20 years ago.
After Father Piemontese, the monks sang Happy Birthday in
Italian twice for Bocelli before he cut a large white cake
marked "Love and Forgiveness, Happy Birthday Andrea".
Later at the concert, Bocelli sang Ave Maria and a number of
other songs.
"This place is oozing with spirituality," he told the crowd
in the piazza outside the lower basilica, where St Francis is
buried.
Bocelli who hails from Tuscany - the region next door to the
Umbrian region where Assisi is located - also presented a new
charity initiative of his foundation.
The project, named "Project Virginia" after Bocelli's
daughter, will benefit the Saint Damien children's hospital in
Haiti, a country which has one of the world's highest infant
mortality rates.
The video of the event can be found at
www.sanfrancescopatronoditalia.it
(Reporting By Philip Pullella, editing by Paul Casciato)