MONTREAL – There was a universally catholic intensity to Leonard Cohen’s work. It was found in his “Song of Bernadette,” which Jennifer Warnes recorded, in his song “Suzanne” when he referenced Montreal’s Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours Chapel (“the sun shines down like honey on our Lady of the Harbour”), in his novel Beautiful Losers about St. Kateri Tekakwitha, and in his astonishing spiritual, Book of Mercy.

What started with a simple request from her parish priest has made singer Kelley Mooney a YouTube hit garnering more than 426,000 views with her new rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

“We were at Easter Mass in our own parish in Iona, P.E.I., and I had sung a song that ended with the word Hallelujah being repeated,” Mooney told The Catholic Register.  “After Mass, our parish priest asked if I would sing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah.’ ”

Promising that she would, she looked up the lyrics. But to her dismay, she found that Cohen’s lyrics were not appropriate for Mass.