Pope Benedict meets The Beatles

Take Gregorian chant, add the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, include the voice of Pope Benedict XVI and mix it all together in London's Abbey Road studios, where The Beatles once recorded. The result, Music from the Vatican: Alma Mater, is certain to be a Christmas hit.

Colin Barlow, president of Geffen Records UK, expects the record to sell "quite a lot of copies". Alma Mater offers a message of hope in this time of recession, he believes. For Simon Boswell, who has worked with Elton John and The Sex Pistols, the experience of recording music in St Peter's Basilica at night, after the doors had been closed to the tourists, was special.

"Coming from the viewpoint of the non-believer, I was much moved," he told the Irish Times. "To hear Gregorian chant in the place where it was first meant to be heard, and where it sounds at its most evocative, was just amazing."

Don Giulio Neroni, head of Multimedia San Paolo, hired three composers for the album: Italian Stefano Mainetti, Moroccan Nour Eddine and Englishman Simon Boswell, and asked them to write a soundtrack around the voice of Pope Benedict and Gregorian chant as sung by the Choir of the Philharmonic Academy of Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI speaks on seven of the tracks and sings on the other. On track one, "Sancta Dei Genitrix", he explains what the record is about, saying: "Faith is love, and for that reason it creates poetry and music."