Sister Janet Mead, who turned The Lord’s Prayer into 1970s hit, dead at 84

ADELAIDE, Australia — Sister Janet Mead, a nun from Australia who sang a rock ‘n’ roll rendition of The Lord’s Prayer during the 1970s, died Wednesday. She was 84.

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The Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide confirmed the nun’s death but did not give a cause, the Australian Broadcasting Company reported. Friends said she had been suffering from cancer, according to The Washington Post.

A reluctant pop star, Sister Mead preferred to speak out against welfare cuts for the working classes and opposed the Vietnam War. But it was her rendition of “The Lord’s Prayer,” composed and arranged by Arnold Strais in late 1973, that rocketed her to fame, the Post reported.

The song charted in the U.S. for 13 weeks beginning in February 1974, rising to No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot 100 during Easter week. She became the first Australian artist to have a gold record in the U.S. and the song was nominated for a Grammy Award for best inspirational performance (nonclassical), the newspaper reported. The song lost to Elvis Presley’s version of How Great Thou Art.”

“The Lord’s Prayer” single was distributed to 31 countries and sold more than 2 million copies worldwide, according to the Australian Broadcasting Company. It became the only Top 10 song in which the entire lyrical content originated from words taken from the Bible.

Sister Mead became the second nun to have a hit record in the U.S. and globally, the Post reported. Jeanine Deckers of Belgium (Sister Luc Gabriel), known as “the Singing Nun,” had a hit with the French-language song “Dominique,” which stayed at No. 1 for four weeks in December 1963. The Belgian nun’s story was made into a 1966 film, “The Singing Nun,” which starred Debbie Reynolds in the title role.

Music producer Martin Eldman was asked by Catholic Radio and Television Services in Australia to listen to a tape of the nun’s rock mass at St. Francis Xavier’s Cathedral in Adelaide, The Sydney Morning Herald reported in April 1974. Eldman asked Sister Mead to come to Sydney, and “The Lord’s Prayer” was recorded in one day, the newspaper reported.

The nun said that she could not understand why so many people bought the record.

“Some say it was because people saw the words of the Lord’s Prayer in a new light (that’s what I hope!), while someone sent me a magazine cutting from America suggesting that after seeing ‘The Exorcist.’ people felt so unclean they went out and bought a copy of ‘Lord’s Prayer,’” Sister Mead told the Morning Herald in her 1974 interview. “But I can’t believe people would go and buy it just because it’s sung by a nun. I would never go and buy a record just for the singer, anyway, but then the kids do buy David Cassidy’s records because they like him.”

Despite her newfound fame, Sister Mead shunned the spotlight and turned down offers to tour in the U.S., according to the Australian Broadcasting Company.

She continued to teach at St. Aloysius College and donated the royalties from her record to charity.

“It was a fairly big strain because all the time there are interviews and radio talkbacks and TV people coming and film people coming,” she told the news outlet.

Born in Adelaide, Sister Mead was named the South Australian of the year in 2004 for her work over the decades caring for the homeless, the Australian Broadcasting Company.

She said that singing was simply a natural progression. She became a nun at 17, and in 1973 a short film set to the music of her hit showed her singing her signature song while sitting with young people, Religion News Service reported.

“I think that everyone has a song to sing really, haven’t they?” Sister Mead told the Australian Broadcasting Company.

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