The renowned composer and director of the Diocese Choir of Rome, Mons. Marco Frisina, will arrive in Mexico in October to teach the chair of sacred art. It will also premiere a composition dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe performed on the occasion of a mass in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
Fr. José Guillermo Gutiérrez Fernández, director of the Center for Family, Bioethics and Society Studies of the Pontifical University of Mexico (CEFABIOS), an institution that is responsible for the organization, explained to ACI Press that this visit represents a moment of great importance for the cultural and spiritual life of the country.
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The Sacred Art Chair was founded 25 years ago in the Mexican city of Monterrey, Nuevo León, by Florencia Infante de Garza, with the guarantee of the Vatican. According to the priest, he intends to spread the “sacred art as a means of evangelization”, bringing seminarians and laity to experts in “the different arts that have to do with the transmission of faith.”
In 2024 he moved to the Pontifical University of Mexico (UPM) and this will be the first to be held in Mexico City. It will be there that Mons. Frisina will offer a conference for priests, a master class aimed at liturgical music composers and a workshop in the Mariana Square aimed at choirs, escolanías and directors of religious music.
On October 17 at the UPM Auditorium at 10:00 a.m. (local time) will give the master class Aimed at composers and directors of orchestra “Sacred Music”. Then, at 4:00 p.m. (local time) the conference “The importance of singing in the liturgy” for priests, psalmists and the general public.
Fr. Gutiérrez stressed that Mons. Frisina is an “highly authorized voice” to offer quality training, capable of performing works “worth praising the Trinity and not simply a popular music that can be interesting, but that is not the genre of the liturgy.”
Mass for peace
In addition to the academic activities, Mons. Frisina composed a “Mass for the Peace and Fraternity of all peoples in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe”, which will be performed on October 23 during a celebration in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which will be chaired by Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes, Archbishop Primado de México. As explained by Fr. Gutiérrez, this initiative seeks to “beg your intercession to achieve peace in our country, in our America and in the world.”
The priest said that the celebration is located in a “moment of tension in every way, of a great polarization, of a very marked and very strong ideological drift both in our country”, to which an “authoritarianism is added, a somewhat manipulated democracy that we have already seen in other contexts.”
Faced with this reality, he considered that “we listen to the voice of Mary, our mother who calls us all to reconciliation, peace, to feel brothers from each other” in this regard, art said, but especially, music has the ability to “transmit faith and envelop us in mystery.”
Reactivate musical creativity
Fr. Gutiérrez expressed his hope that both the chair and the Mass will lead to “reactivating creativity, the desire for a new emergence of liturgical music of a certain level”, in order to “unite the choirs of heaven to praise the Trinity.”
He acknowledged that “liturgical abuses” persists within the Mass, therefore, he expressed his desire for his visit to be a stimulus so that “the celebration of the Eucharist and the other sacraments is increasingly worthy as corresponds to its value and its dignity.”
Diego López Colín
I am a graduate of journalism at the Carlos Septién García school with experience of religious institutional communication. Since 2016 I write for digital media and, since 2018, I report the most important news about the Catholic event in Mexico for the Ewtn news channel. ACI Press correspondent in Mexico since 2023.