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Singer-songwriter Audrey Assad seeks to bring a message of Pope Francis about building bridges to the music business. "Paul is a pontifex, a builder of bridges," the Pope Francis said at a Mass May 8. "He doesn't want to become a builder of walls. ... This is the attitude of Paul in Athens: Build a bridge to their heart, in order then to take another step and announce Jesus Christ. As a musician, a unique way I live that out, being Catholic in an industry full of evangelicals and Protestants," Assad said, is to "establish bridges ... (to) be Catholic in the presence of people (who have) never encountered a Catholic before." A New Jersey native, Assad grew up in a Christian Plymouth Brethren home and never encountered a Catholic until she was 21. Then she met a high school student who changed her life. A Catholic involved in LifeTeen ministries, he knew his faith really well, and he "asked me questions that challenged my faith," Assad recalled. She said she was already considering entering the Catholic Church because she liked the reverence and the incense, but that his words really challenged her to come to a deeper understanding of her faith. She became a Catholic in 2007, realizing that the "sacraments were real and I needed them, and that the only place to really get them was in a Catholic Church," she told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview.

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