FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Rosalia has achieved what no other pop star has – received the Vatican's blessing for her chart-topping, experimental and deeply religious fourth album writes Fiona Sturges

- Fiona Sturges

You could see it as divine intervention. When Rosalía, the Catalan pop sensation known for her bold, genre-hopping sound, released her fourth album, Lux, earlier this month, the reviews were ecstatic. “A masterpiece... possibly the best album of the year,” wrote The Independent’s Roisin O’Connor. “A truly compelling, involving experience ... uniformly beautiful,” praised The Guardian.

These rapturous write-ups feel especially impressive when you consider this is not your run-of-the-mill pop record. Spread across four movements and sung in 13 languages, Lux is a concept album structured around the lives of female saints and mystics, including the German abbess Hildegard of Bingen and the Hebrew prophetess Miriam. It also features operatic vocals, massed choirs, fado singer Carminho, poetry from Patti Smith, plus thundering accompaniment from the London Symphony Orchestra. To call Lux esoteric would be an understatement, yet that hasn’t stopped it from landing in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart, or from topping the Billboard Latin, Classical and World album charts.

More unusual still is that Lux serves as a showcase for its creator’s spiritual convictions. On the song “Divinize”, Rosalía compares her vertebrae to rosary beads, while in “Novia Robot”, she sings that she’s “guapa para Dio”, which roughly translates to “hot for God”. In case we were in any doubt of the album’s religious meaning, its cover has the singer in what looks a lot like a nun’s veil.

Now, extraordinarily, the Vatican has delivered its verdict on