ROME — When three parish priests from Northern Ireland signed a recording contract on the steps of Westminster Cathedral in 2008, they never imagined they were about to become one of the most successful classical acts in modern music.
Their debut album, The Priests, sold nearly two million copies worldwide, topped Billboard and international charts, and earned a Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling UK debut by a classical act.
Yet for Fathers Martin O’Hagan, Eugene O’Hagan, and David Delargy, sacred music has never been about fame.
Instead, they see every performance as an extension of their priestly ministry.
An unexpected beginning
The story began when a Sony Music executive went searching for priests who could sing.
Father David Delargy recalled that the discovery happened almost by accident.
“One of the Sony record labels, one of the leaders there had an idea for recording an album that might involve some priests,” he said.
“So they sent out some, a scout.”
The scout eventually heard the three priests singing together.
“When they heard the three of us singing together, they realized we’d been singing together since our boyhood days,” Father Delargy said.
“They thought, ‘these guys, they sound quite nice together. Let’s make an album with them.’”
The group signed its recording contract on the steps of Westminster Cathedral before releasing four albums together, beginning with The Priests in 2008.
Music as priestly ministry
The three priests first began singing together while attending boarding school in Northern Ireland during the 1970s.
Their musical friendship continued while studying together in Rome and remained an important part of their priestly lives long before international success arrived.
Father Delargy insists that performing never separates him from his vocation.
“For me, I don’t leave my priesthood behind me or to the side when I’m performing on the stage or singing on the stage.”
“My priesthood is there and I am ministering through the means of sacred music to those who are, if you like, the congregation, rather than the audience.”
He believes sacred music allows God to work in hearts in ways that words alone often cannot.
“In some profound ways, it moves people and it evokes emotions and feelings and thoughts that might otherwise not have been there.”
“So I think God will use what our little, our poor little voices and instruments, he will use all that to his own kind purposes and ends.”
Returning to Rome
Nearly twenty years after their breakthrough, The Priests returned to one of the places where their friendship first deepened: the Pontifical Irish College in Rome.
Invited for the college’s centenary celebrations, the group led what organizers described as its first-ever musical pilgrimage.
“We are all former students of the Irish College,” Father Martin O’Hagan said.
“The college is a place of prayer, a place of formation.”
As part of the celebration, musicians traveled throughout Rome, singing in some of the city’s most historic churches, including San Clemente, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, St. Mary Major, and San Colombano.
“We have had the wonder to bring music, even on our musical pilgrimage, again, a first of its kind,” Father Martin said.
“It’s been marvellous bringing music into that context so that those singers, musicians, can really feel the resonance of the power of music and prayer combined together.”
Beauty that draws people to God
Because Father Eugene O’Hagan was unable to travel for health reasons, mezzo-soprano Nuala Murray joined the pilgrimage.
She described witnessing firsthand the power sacred music has to attract people.
“A few days ago, we were singing in the little church of San Clemente,” she recalled.
“As we were singing, the people were just coming in.”
“They heard the music from outside and they came in.”
For Murray, music shares the same evangelizing power as sacred architecture and Christian art.
“It has that ability,” she said.
“We’ve been looking at that throughout our week about beauty in architecture, beauty in art, and primarily for us, beauty in music.”
“The beauty isn’t just in the thing itself, it brings you somewhere else.”
Sacred music as prayer
The musical pilgrimage concluded with a concert in the gardens of the Pontifical Irish College featuring sacred music spanning centuries of the Church’s tradition.
For Father Martin, sacred music has always been inseparable from prayer.
“Music can express praise, it can express peace, it can express a prayer for those who are full of joy, but it can also journey with those who are experiencing difficulty.”
“So sacred music in its essence is prayer.”
Quoting St. Augustine, he added, “When you sing, you pray twice.”
“I rely very heavily on it.”
He described sacred music as “a wonderful vein, a golden thread that enriches the Church and the message that the Church is asked to proclaim, the Good News.”
A point of contact with the faith
Although The Priests became an international recording success, Father Delargy believes the group’s true mission has remained unchanged.
“We believe that God is beautiful and that he reveals himself to us through beauty,” he said.
“Beauty attracts.”
“And God wants to attract us to Himself.”
He believes sacred music often becomes a person’s first encounter with Christianity.
“Even people who don’t have an explicit faith will still be attracted by the beauty of music.”
“And sometimes the music, sacred music I’m talking about in particular, sacred music will be for many people their only point of contact explicitly with the Christian faith.”
“The Lord will use all these various means to draw us to himself. And as I say, music has a wonderful way of doing that.”
For The Priests, nearly two decades after an unexpected rise to international fame, the mission remains exactly where it began: using sacred music to lead hearts toward God.
Adapted by Jacob Stein
