After a period of agnosticism in his youth, he recognized God’s hand in his life.Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli is no stranger to speaking about his faith. Both in his music and in interviews over the years, he has shown that his Catholicism is important to his life. However, that was not always the case, as he mentioned in a recent interview with Fr. Davide Banzato on an Italian television program.
“When I was young, being an agnostic seemed like a comfortable position for me to embrace,” he said. Before discovering his faith, he did what many people do, especially when they meet with success in the entertainment industry, as he did: he lived a somewhat dissolute life, and indulged in excesses in order to fill what he calls the “missing part of myself.” Despite his success, “there was still unrest. Every evening, you have to reach your goals. When you don’t, you feel bad. Success makes everything easier, but in the end, you find yourself with your hands empty, and you feel like you are sinking into a whirlpool of vice.”
That is when, as he said in an earlier interview with the Australian magazine The Catholic Leader, “some existential questions became urgent. I realized that making any choice, we stand at a fork in the road – one path is leading towards the good, the second in the direction of evil … I chose the path that seemed more logical, which my intelligence, though limited, identified as a path without alternative” — the path of faith.
For him, the key to his conversion was realizing that his life is being guided by a higher plan, and that the universe is not purely the result of randomness and chance. “When you ask yourself about the meaning of life, and you search for answers, you discover so many things! And I think I discovered that chance does not exist,” he told Fr. Banzato.
“I believe this to be true because I perceive it. I don’t have tangible proof that this is the case, but there are thousands, thousands of facts, big and small, that convince me of this: what has happened to me, and continues to happen every day, is the fruit of design.” This realization, he said, “was the first step towards a complete reconciliation with my faith.”
When asked what he would say to someone who does not share his faith, he said he would understand their position, and he referred to the Gospel, which tells us, “‘Do not judge and you will not be judged, do not condemn and you will not be condemned.’” However, his faith is fundamental for his own life. “In my case,” he said, “not having faith would mean living in despair. My life would be an inevitable tragedy, because life on this Earth ends with death.” This is why, as he said in his interview in The Catholic Leader, “Faith is a truly priceless gift that I try to maintain and deepen, and it supports me day after day.”
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