Pasadena Students Remember Their Historic Performance For Pope Francis Following Pontiff’s Passing

Following the death of Pope Francis on Monday at age 88, members of the St. Andrew Catholic School Choir in Pasadena are reflecting on their once-in-a-lifetime experience performing for the Pontiff during the Vatican’s Epiphany Festival in January 2024.

“I was really excited because the Pope is huge, huge in Italy and even here, and I was excited… to perform for him and he’s the leader of the church,” recalled Rell Romero, an eighth grader at St. Andrew School and member of the choir, at the time.

Pope Francis died at 7:35 a.m. in the Vatican on April 21 due to a stroke followed by a coma and irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse, according to Vatican officials. His body will be displayed at St. Peter’s Basilica for public veneration during a nine-day mourning period called Novendiales.

The St. Andrew choir’s journey to Rome in December 2023 and January 2024. The group performed alongside the Sistine Chapel Choir, considered the oldest choir in the world, singing Vespers on New Year’s Eve, at a noontime mass for the feast of Mary on New Year’s Day, and at the Epiphany Mass on January 6.

Arturo Hernandez, another choir member, described the emotional impact of performing for the Pope.

“I was also really excited knowing as the leader of the church is a few feet away from me, and once the music started playing, it’s like I only had a few seconds, and I’m like, ‘oh my gosh, we’re doing this. We’re going to sing. He’s going to hear us live.'”

The Pasadena choir was part of a larger group that included children from St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco and from the Orange County Catholic community. They sang responses in Italian and Latin while performing with the Sistine Chapel Choir.

Patrick Flahive, Choir Director at St. Andrew’s School and Director of Pueri Cantores San Gabriel Valley, led the choir and described the experience as transformative for the students.

“It was a wonderful opportunity for them to sing for a huge international audience, to travel halfway around the world to sing for one of the most prominent leaders on the planet,” he said.

Principal Jae Kim of St. Andrew School noted this marked the first time the St. Andrew School Choir performed for a Pope, calling it “a wonderful culmination of the hard work” of the students.

Breaking with tradition, Pope Francis will be buried at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, becoming the first pope since Leo XIII in 1903 to be interred outside the Vatican.

For the young choir members, their performance for the now-deceased pontiff remains a defining moment. Both Romero and Hernandez expressed interest in continuing with choir as they advance to high school, carrying forward the memory of their historic Vatican performance.