The annual Christmas concert at the Vatican in Rome had a Jamaican twist this year with a performance by diamond-selling, Grammy-winning artiste Shaggy.

The performer dropped two tunes on his audience – Angel, the single from his hugely popular album Hot Shot released in 2000; as well as the holiday staple Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas which he performed alongside Anggun, the Indonesian-born French singer-songwriter and television personality.

In a series of posts on his Instagram page, Shaggy shared his feeling about his latest performance in Rome.

“I recently had the pleasure of playing a Christmas charity concert for the Vatican in Rome … it was an awesome experience, we brought a little piece of the Jamaican culture to the Vatican and at the same time raised funds for good causes #Haiti and #Lebanon,” he noted.

The concert was pre-recorded at the Auditorium Conciliazione in Rome on December 16 and broadcast on Christmas Eve on the Italian TV and streamed internationally.

Shaggy is also photographed meeting with Pope Francis, who, prior to the recording of the concert, held audience with the promoters, organisers and artistes of the Christmas concert, the proceeds of which will be donated to the Pontifical Foundation Scholas Occurrentes and the Don Bosco Salesian Missions Foundation.

Raising funds for charity is nothing new for Shaggy. His Make A Difference Foundation produces and staged the popular Shaggy and Friends concert for a number of years with the proceeds, which totalled in the millions, going towards the Bustmante Hospital for Children located in the Corporate Area.

Shaggy and Friends was first held on January 3, 2009. The event was then staged one year later in 2010 after which it was decided that the concert would be staged every two years due to the huge demands on the artiste’s time to produce an event of its scale and calibre. Since then, concerts have been held in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018. Over the years, an impressive raft of local and international acts have graced the stage at what has become an eagerly anticipated item on the local entertainment calendar. Acts such as Sting, Lauryn Hill, Macy Gray, Deniece Williams, En Vogue, NeYo, Boyz II Men, Wyclef Jean, Tessanne Chin, Romain Virgo, Nadine Sutherland, Third World, Christopher Martin, Allison Hinds, Machel Montano, Bunji Garlin, and Fay-Ann Lyons have graced this stage.

— RJ