19 January 1980
Ireland’s first new number one of the ’80s, our first ’80s chart-topper for an Irish act, and – oh great, it’s Dana singing about the Pope.
In truth, we can chalk this chart-topper up to the merchants in the temple; the Pope had visited Ireland four months earlier, millions had gone along to his open-air events, he was as much a celebrity as a spiritual leader, and ‘Totus Tuus’ was his official papal motto. Basically, this record is bootleg souvenir merchandise, cashing in on any lingering papal buzz.
Also, January was traditionally a quiet month for record releases and sales, so any release with a ready-made target audience had a good chance of sneaking to number one. And Dana still had celebrity status herself as a singer—Ireland’s only Eurovision winner to this point—and TV personality. In other words, this ’80s religious Irish chart topper, Catholic Ireland and all, is an outlier rather than a norm; we won’t meet another for nearly 8 years, and that’ll be by an English evangelical Christian.
‘Totus Tuus’ turns out to be one of those bland folk mass traditional ballads arranged for acoustic guitar, tin whistle and Aran sweater, with a big key change at the end should any future Irish boy band ever want to make a ‘spiritual’ album. The religious content is generic ‘we’ll follow you’ devotion, thankfully without any overt Catholic imprecations to boycott Protestant businesses or burn contraceptives. I can remember several hymns and religious songs from the mass and religion classes of my childhood later that decade, some as catchy as Motown hits, but not ‘Totus Tuus’; it probably didn’t catch on, and in any case it is completely unmemorable.
Something of its time, and the only spark of energy in the whole thing, is the reference to “justice” in the second verse. This was probably a nod to those socialist Latin American clergy of the people, newsworthy in those years, forever going up against undemocratic right-wing demagogues such as military dictators and popes. Sadly, it was not justice for those women and children at the sharp end of workaday institutional Irish Catholic abuse and intolerance even while Dana was busy making doe eyes at John Paul II.
