HARMONY The Mirabilia Children’s Choir performs to raise funds for a school for liturgical music in Pampanga. TONETTE T. OREJAS
PICTURE THIS. Choirs, which are accompanied by strings or rondalla to make Catholic Masses truly solemn, with songs that inspire faith or provide a deepening relationship with God.
The Mirabilia Dei Foundation Inc. (MDFI) dreams of this angelic combination for all the 91 parishes in the Archdiocese of San Fernando in Pampanga where Catholicism has grown in the last 450 years.
Working to make that dream come true, MDFI’s 20 musically gifted children and adults have been holding Christmas concerts to raise funds and support for the construction of a school for liturgical music.
Except for the building, several important requisites are already in place.
For instance, 1,000 square meters have been donated by the choir’s founder, Consuelo Mendoza. Four choir members have completed their music education as scholars of the St. Scholastica’s College (SSC) in Manila. They form the first batch of instructors. Then there is Msgr. Greg Canlas who, at 70, continues to be the choir master and composer of contemporary church songs.
The school’s donated site is an abandoned “bangan” (rice granary) in the yard of Lorenzo Pecson, grandfather of Mendoza, in the defunct town of Betis, which has been attached to Guagua since 1904.
The precursor of the Mirabilia Dei Children’s Choir Juniors and Seniors was the Betis Children’s Choir that sang at the St. James the Apostle Parish in Betis.
The church is one of the National Cultural Treasures in the Philippines, likened to the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican City where the Gospels are told in paintings on walls and ceilings.
Mendoza said it was Canlas who renamed the choir in 2006. Canlas said he found the voices of the children, all coming from working class families, to be “awesome, like God.”
In their Dec. 13 performance at the Apu Mamacalulu Shrine in Angeles City, Archbishop Emeritus Paciano Aniceto said: “Each kid is awesome!” In the concert themed “Celebrating Creation,” the Mirabilia choir sang and played classics, contemporary songs and Filipino favorites.
“We recruited singers from public schools to spread liturgical music,” Mendoza recalled of the group’s beginnings in order to perform at a Palm Sunday procession. Prof. Stan Palma organized the strings ensemble.
Four of the six SSC scholars eventually became part of the Manila Symphony Orchestra, according to Margie Cañonero, choir president. The daughter of a tricycle driver and a bread vendor, Cañonero joined the choir when she was 10 years old. Now 25, she plays and teaches violin to young Mirabilians. The youngest member is Ardy de Leon, son of a man who repairs television sets.