Kerrville choir sings
at Vatican church

By Claudia M. Williams
Staff Writer
In the weeks leading up to a church choir’s tour of Italy, Lynda Ables, music director at First UMC, Kerr-ville, had a dream:
Her choir was assembling to sing at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, only to be told the group was at the wrong church.
“But no,” Ables said, “it was that St. Peter’s.”
The 43-member group did indeed sing at the Vatican June 2, presenting five songs during the evening Mass.
“A choir from a Methodist church singing American music during a Roman Catholic Mass in what’s probably the most holy place in Italy,” Ables said. “Can you imagine that?”
The Kerrville choir tour was a year and a half in the making. While Ables was preparing the itinerary for the May 31 through June 11 trip, the idea of singing at St. Peter’s emerged.
“Choirs are invited to sing there based on the credentials of the conductor and the organist,” Ables said. “Our organist, Sabina Adrian, has five degrees, including a doctorate of music in organ performance.”
Those credentials were a big consideration for Ambassador Tours—the trip organizer—to make the necessary contacts, she said. The travel firm didn’t hesitate to approach St. Peter’s Basilica because, she added, “They know we’re going to bring quality music.”
Choir members were in awe as they walked into the basilica, Ables said.
“On the right is the Pieta” (Michelangelo’s life-size statue of Mary holding the broken body of Jesus Christ in her arms), she said. “We looked at this magnificent statue, and half an hour later we were singing about the body of Christ as communion was served.”
Singing in the basilica was humbling, uplifting and inspiring, Ables said. For some, it was also healing.
Choir member Dawn Shaw admitted that she wasn’t “too excited about going to sing at St. Peter’s” because of what she’s learned about the history of the Roman Catholic Church. While she has some “dear Catholic friends,” she said, “I have had to fight an anti-Catholic bias.”
Shaw said her bias stemmed from her understanding of the Crusades, the Inquisition and modern Roman Catholic prohibitions against birth control.
“We sat there quietly in the choir loft as people filed in,” she said. “I looked out over that huge church filling with people, and I had an immense feeling of God’s presence.
“God was there loving us, loving his people in spite of all our sins and our differences.”
St. Peter’s Basilica was one of four venues where the Kerrville choir sang. In Assisi, the Texans performed during Mass at St. Francis Basilica. They presented concerts at San Bartolomeo Church in Pistoia and Santa Maria dei Servi Church in Bologna.
At each venue, the repertoire included anthems from First UMC, Kerrville, services throughout the year.
“We were asked specifically to sing American songs,” Ables said.
Unlike in other European countries, she noted, English is not widely understood in Italy.
“They had no idea of the words we were singing,” she said of worshipers, “but they got the gist. They felt the spirituality.”
Ables said the travelers, 70 in all, believed God was using them in ministry.
“When I ask what stayed with them, they say it was the singing, not the gondola ride or the Tower of Pisa,” she said. “Here were regular church folks singing regular Sunday church music. It was all about worshiping one God Almighty—not a Protestant God or a Catholic God.”
One profound memory choir members share is of a private concert not on the itinerary, Ables said. It happened on a day trip from Florence to Siena.
“We came across a beautiful area,” she said. “It was an American cemetery with 4,402 white crosses on the hillside.”
The crosses marked gravesites of “lots of Texas boys,” Ables said. She said she couldn’t help but think about the young men who never got to go home or about “the mamas who couldn’t bury their babies.”
“Thirteen hundred crosses,” she said, “were marked with ‘a soldier known only to God.’”
The date was June 6—D-Day.
“We stood there in the middle of this cemetery and sang ‘America the Beautiful,’” Ables said. “We sang it for them.”

To veiw more photos go to http://www.kfumc.org/italypics.htm