Open the gate and enter with Valerio Ciriello SJ into the Jesuit Church in Lucerne for MittWortsMusik: the noise of everyday life falls silent, the word opens the soul, the music hits the heart.  

Like all Swiss schoolchildren, Valerio Ciriello first worked his way dutifully on the recorder before he was allowed to move up instrumentally. "My choice fell on the trumpet, but the success was moderate," he says and smiles, "I wasn't exactly the most diligent, ergo my willpower puff was too weak". That makes his performance today all the more powerful: the Jesuit and university chaplain in Lucerne since August orchestrates the MittWortsMusik in the Jesuit Church of St. Francis Xavier. On Wednesdays at 12.15 p.m., he invites people to the church on the Reuss for music and words. "Whether devout or not, old or young: people have the opportunity to sit back for half an hour in this magnificent baroque church and leave their everyday life behind," says Ciriello about the low-threshold offer, "a real luxury for many, as I gather from the feedback."

What his predecessor Franz-Xaver Hiestand SJ and Prefect Hansruedi Kleiber SJ once started together with the Lucerne School of Music, he wants to firmly anchor in the music metropolis, known for its Lucerne Festival in the KKL: MittWortsMusik is to be extended from about 20 times a year during the university semesters to the whole year - with speakers from all walks of life "and sometimes with more women than men. For the summer semester, for example, he has engaged a young sociology student, co-founder of Pfasyl, a scout group for children from asylum-seeking families; a female doctor from the organisation "Doctors for Environmental Protection"; and a female journalist involved in civil society. He is not interested in whether and how Catholic or of a different faith the speakers are. "What matters is that they have something to say, something to share," says Ciriello. "Priests, theologians, and religious do not have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit - fortunately not. The Spirit blows where it wants. And often where you least expect it."

He leaves the choice of pieces to organist Susanne Z'Graggen, lecturer at the Lucerne School of Music, who can offer students performances in small ensembles with MittWortsMusik. Every now and then, she chooses a chamber piece by Beethoven, Ciriello's favourite composer, whose symphonies he loves above all else. "Whenever I get to hear the 9th 'Freude schöner Götterfunken' - preferably in a large concert hall, of course, and not canned - I get moist eyes." Music can also make you dizzy, "but that's not what I mean when I say: music hits you right in the heart. Music can open, sensitise, make us more permeable. Music and words, as we cultivate it at the MittWortsMusik events, is a unique pair."