They came, they saw, they sang
St. Michael’s Choir School got to perform for a Pope, just not the one they expected
ROME— It was to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the first papal audience in 42 years for members of Toronto’s St. Michael’s Choir School and a chance to sing for the musicloving Pope Benedict XVI in the Sistine Chapel.
When the trip was organized months in advance, school officials couldn’t have foreseen that Benedict would step down on Feb. 28, to be replaced by a pontiff not quite as renowned for his musical appreciation.
As one sympathetic cleric put it, Pope Francis, who was elected March 13, “couldn’t carry a note in a bucket.”
The 190 boys who took part in the tour still managed to see the chapel, but only as tourists. And they did sing briefly for Pope Francis at his weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday, where they were allotted a preferential bloc of seats dead centre in front of the crowd.
School director Stephen Handrigan told The Canadian Press that the Pope “was looking directly at us. We were maybe 50 metres from him and he gave us rigorous applause at the end of our performance, nodded to us.”
Earlier, as part of their 75th anniversary Italian tour, the choir spent a few days in Florence, seeing some sights and singing at Sacro Cuore Church.
Then they got down to the real work, singing pontifical high mass in the world’s most famous church, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
It was the choir’s first appearance at the Vatican in 16 years.
The wake-up call came at 6:30 a.m. last Sunday for the boys. It was going to be a long day.
It was also, Handrigan told the teens and preteens, the biggest day of their lives.
Principal conductor Jerzy Cichocki and his two associates, Charissa Bagan and Teri Dunn, managed to squeeze in a short rehearsal the previous evening after their bus trip through Tuscany, in the dining room as dinner dishes were being cleared.
“This is what happens in Rome,” shrugged Cichocki. “Just a few minutes ago I was finally given the Pater Noster we are supposed to sing tomorrow. You have to go with the flow.”
The flow continued Sunday morning, with a convoy of four buses headed down a winding road toward Vatican City.
“It isn’t as big as I thought,” observed one of the boys on entering St. Peter’s Square, prompting a loud chuckle from Father Michael Busch, rector of St. Michael’s Cathedral, the choir’s home church.
His colleague, Cardinal Thomas Collins, archbishop of Toronto, was already there in full red-capped cardinal’s ensemble to welcome the boys. “We have something that is unique and world class in this choir,” he said, a sentiment echoed by a former Torontonian on the papal staff, Father Owen Keenan, who led the boys into the grandiose basilica, past Swiss Guards in their striped uniforms, with the words, “as someone once said, ‘Follow me.’ ”
When the boys failed to react to the biblical reference he shook his head, muttering “Tough crowd. Tough crowd.”
The boys settled into their stalls on one side of the high altar opposite St. Peter’s much smaller resident adult choir, the Cappella Giulia, with whom they were to alternate during the mass.
Perhaps most touchingly and at Collins’ request, the boys sang “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” in a sensitive arrangement made by Kunle Owolabi when still a student at the school.
“I sang here for Pope John XXIII when I was 10 years old and I wanted my son to have a similar experience,” said Theresa MacLean, one of many parents and friends following the choir’s tour. Her son Francesco, 12, called it “the chance of a lifetime.”
The boys also sang the following day, at Collins’ official Roman church, St. Patrick’s, at a morning mass in his honour, and at Canadian Martyrs Church, established in 1955 at the instigation of Pope Pius XII as the official Canadian Catholic Church in Rome.
A day later, they performed at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, a kind of homage to their founder, John Edward Ronan, who had studied there in the early 1930s before founding, in Toronto, one of only six choirs affiliated with the institution.
To celebrate the choir’s 75th anniversary and the Pontifical Institute’s 125th, the choir presented an all-Canadian program.
“It’s a beautiful thing we do,” Handrigan told his charges a day later over dinner, following the papal audience and an afternoon visit to the Roman Colosseum.
Cichocki obviously agreed: “This is season 23 for me. I went to the school, I’ve taught here and been an organist on and off. I believe in the place.
“We are not in show business. We are a cathedral choir, preserving the musical traditions of our church. And if you get these kids’ heads in the right place it is amazing what they can do.”
Or as Collins put it at the Canadian Martyrs concert, quoting St. Augustine, “he who sings prays twice.”