Festival passes heritage of sacred music to next generation

Detroit — The sound of 273 children’s voices singing in the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament was nothing short of “heavenly” to Joe Balistreri, co-director of music at the cathedral.

“It was extraordinarily beautiful,” said Balistreri of the March 19 Michigan Choral Festival and Mass for Treble Choirs, an event held by American Federation Pueri Cantores, the international student choral organization of the Catholic Church.

The event’s conductor was Paul French, music director at Chicago’s Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish and director of the professional, 24-voice William Ferris Chorale. French rehearsed with the kids from about 9 that morning, and conducted music for the liturgy that ended around 4 p.m.

While Pueri Cantores-affiliated schools, choirs and parishes across Michigan were welcome to participate, several choirs from northern Ohio also sang.

Balistreri, who served as organist for the afternoon music festival and Mass, said it was the first Pueri Cantores event offered in the Archdiocese of Detroit “in a while,” and that the large number of attendees was a sign that there is appeal for sacred music among youth.

Balistreri said it is common today for secular school students to learn more sacred music than Catholic school students. He said the Pueri Cantores event was a good opportunity for Catholic students to experience sacred music in a church setting, thereby helping make the connection to their faith.



“(Pueri Cantores) plugs young people into their Catholic heritage,” Balistreri said. “It’s not just music for music’s sake — it assists in one’s self-offering to God.”

He said he was impressed at the flexibility of the nearly 300 elementary through eighth-grade kids, who had arrived at the cathedral early that morning, rehearsed several times, and sang the prelude and various Mass parts at the liturgy.

“They performed about two dozen individual pieces of music,” said Balistreri of the prelude that included “A Prayer for Humility” by Mark Patterson, Mass hymns and the Mass ordinary, which included the Kyrie in Greek and the Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus Dei in Latin.

Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron presided over the 2 p.m. Mass, and expressed his thanks for the gift of the assembly’s music in his homily.

The archbishop explained that the music festival was not a “concert,” rather, the youth were gathered to sing “to offer your music as part of our worship to God.”

He said the event, which also commemorated the feast day of St. Joseph, highlighted the special calling of God for St. Joseph to be the husband of Mary and foster father of Jesus.

Similarly, the Pueri Cantores singers are called to live their own special mission in making music for God, he said.

“Because your mission is sacred,” said the archbishop. “You are making beautiful music in the liturgy, the Mass, because the gift you offer God deserves that beauty.”

Joseph Jeffrey, campus minister at Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish School in Plymouth, had come with the school’s youth chorus, Counsellor’s Youth Chorale.

Jeffrey said he was inspired by the “visible sign of so many young children enthusiastic about praising the Lord.”

A Counsellor’s Youth Chorale parent, Michele Paris, said her fourth-grade son was participating that day and she was happy to come along to the cathedral.

“I’m just so happy. The last time I was (at the cathedral) was when my brother was ordained,” she explained, referring to Fr. Robert Fisher at the National Shrine of the Little Flower, Royal Oak.

Dominic Vogelbacher, a sixth-grader with the Saint Raphael Seraphim Trebles in Bay Village, Ohio, thoroughly enjoyed singing in the Pueri Cantores event that day.

“It was a really fun time,” he said, adding his recommendation to join the choir for any other kids who are interested.

Fellow sixth-grader Owen Gerba said the festival and Mass were “really fun and all the kids’ choirs made a very nice sound in the church. And with all the choirs combined it was a very nice time.”