(RNS) —In the summer of 2022, when superstar reggaeton artist Bad Bunny released “Un Verano Sin Ti” (“A Summer Without You”), an album that went on to become Spotify’s most streamed album of all time, even the archbishop of San Juan, Puerto Rico, came down with Bad Bunny fever.
Calling the singer a “phenomenon,” Archbishop Roberto González Nieves reflected the fierce pride Puerto Ricans had for Bad Bunny and commended the global star’s mission as a troubadour for our time. “In his personal life, up until now, impeccable,” the archbishop wrote in Spanish.
Bad Bunny, a native of Vega Baja, west of San Juan, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, gets less-positive reviews from Catholic conservatives whose objections, citing Bad Bunny’s party tracks heavy on sexual innuendo, prompted González to apologize for his praise, while still noting, “Thousands of our Catholic youth are his followers.”
The artist has had an irreverent relationship to the faith: The former altar server and chorister at his home parish appeared last fall with Mick Jagger in a “Saturday Night Live” skit in which the two donned nuns’ habits as the nuns worked to find the men hidden in the convent. In a June article in Vogue Italy, Bad Bunny said he doesn’t pray. “I don’t pray myself, but I know that my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt do it for me,” he said.
But Bad Bunny, who defended Puerto Rico after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to the U.S. territory as “a floating island of garbage” at a rally for former President Donald Trump in New York, has recently shown fans a newly prayerful posture.
In September, as the island faced down what meteorologists warned …