500 Youngsters Fine-Tune Their Voices to Sing at Papal Mass

After the presents are unwrapped and the stockings emptied this morning, about 500 young singers and their chaperons will finish packing for a performance before Pope John Paul II in Italy.

The choir members from Los Angeles, Azusa and Claremont will leave Sunday to join 5,000 other children from around the globe to celebrate a special children’s jubilee Mass on Jan. 2 at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.

The children make up the International Congress of Pueri Cantores, which will convene its 30th meeting in Rome in conjunction with the Roman Catholic Church’s worldwide celebration of the Great Jubilee Year 2000.

“Our mission, as pueri cantores, is that children around the world will sing of the peace of God,” said Patrick Flahive, president of the American Federation of Pueri Cantores, Latin for child singers.

“There is no better image of that 1/8peace 3/8 than a beautiful child singing in a beautiful church,” he said.

One hundred and nine children’s choirs from a dozen countries are expected to sing at the Mass and other events in Rome from Wednesday through Jan. 2, Flahive said.

Southland participants are from: St. Mel Catholic Church and St. Mel School in Woodland Hills, St. John Baptist de la Salle Church in Granada Hills, St. John Eudes Catholic Church in Chatsworth, Our Lady of Lourdes in Tujunga, the Choir of Mary’s Children in Claremont and the Choirs of Our Lady Queen of Angels in Azusa, an independent children’s choir.

The highlight of the trip will be the performance before the pope--either at a dress rehearsal New Year’s Eve or at the Mass, Flahive said. The pope’s health will determine his schedule.

Either way, Flahive said, the children are excited about the prospect of singing before the head of the Roman Catholic Church at the turn of the millennium.

“The holy father is really fond of children,” Flahive said. “If he comes to the dress rehearsal, at the end he will shake hands with the children and talk to them about the importance of what they are doing . . . 1/8by 3/8 lifting up others through their music.”

As the experience has drawn closer, said Kathy King, music director at St. Mel School, it has been a challenge to keep the young singers focused on their Gregorian chants and other sacred music.

Between vocal exercises, instruction in breathing techniques and Latin studies, King said, she gives the children lots of encouragement.

“I tell them that this is the first music ever sung in the history of the Roman Catholic Church,” she said, “and that we are going to a historical place where this music was meant to be sung.”