So there I was driving along when I pressed the radio's automatic search and what came up but the splendid tones of rocker Lou Reed. As the music faded out a bright American voice told us in English that Father So-and-so would explain the significance of the Pope's opening of four Holy Doors.
The priest was interrupted by a French-speaking presenter asking him to repeat what he had said in French. With a little help, the priest retold his tale in French and an Italian presenter then relayed the priest's words in Italian.
So what was this trilingual ping-ponging station? The answer soon made itself evident. This was "Jubilaeum", Vatican Radio's brand-new Holy Year station, aimed both at pilgrims and Romans, with a mission to explain, illustrate and relate both the significant events and the Holy Year.
Jubilaeum grabbed your correspondent's attention, for its instant linguistic and cultural crossovers in three languages - and that day's Rome news in English.
For the Rome-based expatriate this is no small matter. Tuning into English-language radio such as the BBC's World Service is a welcome refresher course for the paranoid hack, who fears he will wake up one day speaking and writing such "Italglish" gibberish that no one will understand him or want to employ him.
The brainchild of Vatican Radio's director of English programmes, Sean Lovett (his grandparents came from Tralee), Jubilaeum is a service for the pilgrim visitor to Rome.
The idea came from France '98 World Cup. On arrival in France, reporters were presented with a press kit that included a small FM radio, pre-set to France '98 broadcasting non-stop news, information and commentary.
Sean Lovett and Vatican Radio's director, Father Federico Lombardi, reckoned the idea could work for Rome pilgrims. A "pilgrim's knapsack" was to have included just such a radio. When that plan was abandoned, Vatican Radio switched to a slogan which reads, "You Bring the Radio, We'll Bring the Rest."
Jubilaeum provides a six-language information service. One Jubilaeum channel is in English/ French/Italian (on 105 FM) and a second in Spanish/Portuguese/German (on 96.3 FM). Both channels provide a mix of news bulletins, press reviews, classical and rock music, as well as spreading the Jubilee news.
Designed by Guglielmo Marconi and opened in 1931 by Pope Pius XI, Vatican Radio has always seemed a rather worthy, if staid and stuffy enterprise, broadcasting a limited range of often pre-recorded programmes in 37 languages, mainly on short-wave. Romans have tended to regard it as nothing more than dull religious broadcasting.
Jubilaeum, which went on the air in November, may have changed all that. A team of bright, articulate, young presenters broadcast live, thus giving Jubilaeum a contemporary feel, which means the station has reached a new audience. Sean Lovett has been pleasantly surprised by the Rome feedback which has included secondary school teachers delighted with the station's language-learning possibilities.
"Vatican Radio's raison d'etre is to speak in all languages to all people of good will . . . and Jubilaeum underlines that by the effort that people have to make in order to make themselves understood in a different idiom, in order to break down linguistic barriers," says Sean Lovett.
It is curious, but not surprising, that it should be the Catholic church and not Rome City Council which has conceived and implemented the idea of a multilingual, all-day (08.45 to 20.45) radio station which will primarily service the 30 million tourists expected in the Eternal City this year.
Likewise, it is curious that the conservative, right-wing, and reactionary Catholic church should prove more adept at reaching the global market than a city council run by a progressive, liberal centre-left regime. Curious, but not surprising to anyone remotely familiar either with Italian state administration or the Catholic church.
Paddy Agnew is at pagnew@aconet.it