Oscar Castellino’s Operatic Tribute to Pope Francis

Oscar Castellino gave up a career as a software engineer in Mumbai to pursue the nomadic life of an opera singer

May 3, 2025

After Pope Francis passed away last month, Oscar Castellino composed and sang an operatic tribute to him. The video, Humble Franciscus: Dedication to Pope Francis, is posted on social media, including YouTube where it has gotten more than 4,400 views.

Since 2013, Pope Francis had served as the head of 1.4 billion Roman Catholics around the world. He passed away, at age 88, from a stroke at his home in the Vatican, Rome. He was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“Francis reached out to migrants, the poor and the destitute, to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy members,” The New York Times noted. He “traveled to often-forgotten and far-flung countries and sought to improve relations with an antagonistic Chinese government, Muslim clerics and leaders from across the fragmented Christian world.”

Castellino, a baritone, begins his operatic tribute to Pope Francis with the words:

“Humble Francisco servant of the poor

with simple words that touched our weary hearts…”

Castellino has performed with the Welsh National Opera and the Scottish Opera. In March, he was one of the singers in “A Night of Brazilian Music and Modernism,” at the Royal Academy, London. Also, that month, he performed as a soloist in Carmina Burana, staged by the Bradford Festival Choral Society and the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra, United Kingdom.

In 2017, he composed the music and co-wrote the words for an anthem for the planet Mars, at the invitation of the Mars Society.

Castellino graduated from the Royal College of Music, London. He applied for admission at the encouragement of Patricia Rozario, a soprano who taught at the college. The roots of both their families are from Goa, India.

“It is very unlikely that I would have taken up singing” as a profession, had it not been for Giving Voice to India, a five day workshop he attended in Mumbai, in 2011. It was conducted by Rozario and Mark Troop, a pianist and vocal coach, also based in London. They founded the workshop in 2009 “to raise the standard of Western Classical singing, both art song and opera, in India.”

So far, the duo have held 29 workshops in Panaji, Pune, Delhi and Ahmedabad, in addition to Mumbai. “Patricia and Mark could have earned more money teaching for an hour in London (than) what the course charges for an entire week of training” in Mumbai, Castellino told Luis Dias, a physician and musician, in a 2012 interview for The Navhind Times. “That speaks of their motivation and desire to make a change.”

Castellino was one of ten students, from among 600 applicants, admitted to the opera program at the Royal College of Music. Studying at the school, Castellino told Goa’s O Heraldo, “was a steep learning curve. I came across musicians who had years of training in classical music and I didn’t even read sheet music,”

In 2011, at the time of his application to the Royal College, Castellino was singing with the Stop-Gaps Choral Ensemble, an amateur group in Mumbai. His day job was working as a software engineer. He took up the job, four years earlier, upon graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Physics from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. While in college, he assisted in research laboratories at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. He was selected for the National Initiative on Undergraduate Science program.

Castellino, 38-years-old, was born in Mumbai. His family moved to Mussoorie, India, at the foothills of the Himalayas, where his parents worked at the St. George’s College. His father conducted both the school and the church choirs. Speaking of his musical upbringing, Castellino told O Heraldo, “My father would conduct…my mother was a loud singer, my brother would play the keyboards and my sister would sing solos. It was a wonderful atmosphere.”

Castellino is developing music for the operatic style in Indian languages. On June 21, Castellino will be one of the singers from Goa and Portugal taking part in “Goan Interactions” at the St. Stephen’s Church, London.

It was Castellino’s interest in physics that led to him being asked to compose the music and co-write the anthem for Mars. He contacted Robert Zubrin, founder-president of the Mars Society and a former Lockheed Martin engineer, about wanting to contribute to the Mars project. Finding out that Castellino sang opera, Zubrin asked if he also composed music. Even though he had not composed anything previously, Castellino said yes, he told TheBetterIndia. “When somebody was giving me an opportunity…I decided to give it a shot.”

Speaking of his life as a musician, Castellino noted, “Most musicians are poor. I travel with my music.”