Originally published at National Catholic Register
The maestro was a man of routine. Besides not talking much about his work, which consisted of some of the most memorable film scores in movie history, he was a quiet man of prayer. Every morning at about 6 a.m., Ennio Morricone was out on the streets of Rome to get that day’s newspapers and to pray at the nearby Church of the Gesù. It was a routine that caught the eye of the parish’s then-rector, Jesuit Father Daniele Libanori (and auxiliary bishop of Rome from 2018 to 2024), and sparked an idea.
Thinking ahead to the bicentenary of the reconstitution of the Society of Jesus, commemorating the end of the 41-year suppression of the order from 1773 to 1814, Father Libanori envisioned a Mass celebrating the anniversary at the Church of the Gesù. “I spoke about it with the [Jesuit] vice provincial, Father Claudio Barretta, asking him what he thought of the idea of asking Maestro Ennio Morricone to write a score,” Father Libanori recalled to the Register.
While in his mid-80s, Morricone was as prolific as when his career catapulted back in the 1960s, still taking on large-scale Hollywood pictures as well as Italian TV films, like the
