Some say the purpose of the current papal tour is to raise US citizens’ engagement with climate change and inequality. Others see an attempt to put the institutionalised abuse of thousands of children in the past. But now we know the truth: Pope Francis has an album coming out.

No preview copies of Wake Up! have reached us yet, but its artistic director Don Giulio Neroni tells Rolling Stone that it will be “strongly faithful to the pastoral [sic] and personality of Pope Francis: the Pope of dialogue, open doors, hospitality”. In practice, this means papal speeches set to music in a variety of different styles including “rock” (surprisingly), “pop” (very surprisingly) and “Latin” (perhaps a misunderstanding).

The one track we can listen to already – Wake Up! Go! Go! Forward! – does not, it must be said, show promise. A kind of Italian prog rock, it is bombastic, predictable and over-orchestrated. After a two-minute introduction, we hear a homily delivered by the pope to an audience of young Koreans. (Memorable lines include “Today the responsorial psalm invites us constantly to be glad and sing for joy” and “I don’t like to see young people who are sleeping.”) After which the song moves on to Jesus’s “I am the resurrection” speech, as sung in Latin by Damiano Affinito. Fans of Procol Harum or Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother will understand what the pope was going for, but will struggle to enjoy it. Fans of the pope will at least appreciate the music’s simple message: if you’re not a Catholic, be a Catholic; if you are a Catholic, be more Catholic.

The album will feature rock, prog rock, pop and latin

Scheduled for release on November 27, Wake Up! is not the first pontifical CD. Neroni has in the past released Santo Subito! a posthumous album based on the speeches of John Paul II, and more recently Alma Mater, with Benedict XVI. (“This Pope keeps surprising …” says one of its five-star reviewers on Amazon.) Those were both devoted to recognisably holy music, however, even though they were written partly by the British composer Simon Boswell, who scored Shallow Grave and once toured with Blondie.

So it will surprise many people to see the Vatican now releasing prog rock, a style that 40 years ago was being accused of smuggling Satanic messages into young people’s minds. And it will surprise many more that the pope now shares an artist credit on iTunes with Affinito, a musician who two years ago, it appears, made a dubstep track called Kill the Fuckin’ DJ! Whether it was this particular tune that made the pope want to work with him, we do not yet know.