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Tupac Shakur’s mother Afeni Shakur released a statement to AllHipHop.com today (December 8th), regarding her son’s inclusion on a Vatican play list of influential songs.

Last week the Vatican released its Top 12 influential songs on it’s Myspace page as part of MySpace.com’s new streaming music service.

In addition to Shakur, the list featured a number of prestigious artist including Mozart, Dame Shirley Bassey and Pope Benedict XVI.

“This came as such an amazing surprise – it’s not something I would have ever thought possible,” Afeni Shakur told AllHipHop.com in a statement. “I give thanks every day, knowing Tupac’s words and music continue to have such an incredible effect on people worldwide. My son was always striving to reach out to as many people as he could, and he changed the world in doing so.”

Changes was released posthumously in 1998 on a Greatest Hits album, two years after Tupac Shakur was gunned down on the strip in Las Vegas.

 “It’s a testament to Tupac’s genius that his music can have this kind of impact more than ten years after the fact,” Interscope Geffen A&M Chairman Jimmy Iovine added. “This is an unprecedented honor to his legacy, as well as for those who had the privilege of working with him during his lifetime.”

In September of 2009, Tupac Shakur’s private writings were added to Atlanta University Center’s Robert Woodruff Library ,which also houses Martin Luther King’s papers.