{"id":279911,"date":"2026-04-22T07:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T07:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/279911\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T07:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T07:33:08","slug":"catholic-music-group-awards-3-la-connected-musicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/279911\/","title":{"rendered":"Catholic music group awards 3 LA-connected musicians"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three nationally known music ministers, all with ties to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, have been honored with awards from the National Association of Pastoral Musicians<\/a> (NPM).<\/p>\n

John Flaherty, longtime music director for the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress<\/a>, was named the 2026 recipient of NPM\u2019s Jubilate Deo Award for contributions to pastoral liturgy in the United States. Since 2022, he has been a special assistant to the senior vice president of mission at Loyola Marymount University, overseeing major liturgies and events after serving nearly 30 years as LMU\u2019s director of liturgy and music.<\/p>\n

Rodolfo (Rudy) L\u00f3pez and Estela Garc\u00eda-L\u00f3pez, husband-and-wife musicians and composers originally from Los Angeles, earned the Pastoral Musician of the Year Award for their work in parish and diocesan ministries. Now based in Portland, the couple is known locally and nationally for their contributions to bilingual liturgical music.<\/p>\n

The recipients will receive their honors during NPM\u2019s 50th anniversary convention on July 20-24 in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

\u2018Liturgy is poetry and art\u2019<\/p>\n

Flaherty was a student teacher at Our Lady of Malibu School when the principal, Sister Breege Boyle, asked him to lead music for school liturgies \u2014 something he\u2019d never done.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn high school, I\u2019d played in the folk choir at St. Thomas the Apostle in Riverside,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s a different ballgame to be teaching and leading. Sister Breege would tell me what to play until I began to learn how to lead. She really encouraged me, and that kind of generosity never left me.\u201d<\/p>\n

That spirit of generosity has formed Flaherty\u2019s approach to his four decades of ministry, during which he has taught at every level from elementary to post-graduate studies, worked with leading liturgical composers in concerts and recording sessions, and directed music for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops conferences and retreats. He points to Psalm 116:12 \u2014 \u201cHow can I make a return to the Lord for all the great good done for me?\u201d \u2014 as a guiding light in his approach to ministerial leadership.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be in ministry means that I share my gifts freely, with no expectation that you will do me a favor later,\u201d said Flaherty, who has been married to his wife, Kathy, for 37 years and they have five adult children. \u201cAnd we trust that what we do will make a positive difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

As founding director of the pastoral liturgy and music certification programs at LMU\u2019s Center for Religion and Spirituality, Flaherty has mentored hundreds of students who have become ministry leaders and business professionals, teaching them to embrace learning the \u201cwhy\u201d as much as the \u201chow\u201d of preparing liturgical celebrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiturgy is poetry and art,\u201d Flaherty said. \u201cIt\u2019s much more than just following rubrics; we\u2019re called to find deeper meanings in what\u2019s expressed in liturgy, to discover the heart of it all. There are pastoral as well as intellectual components to what we do at Mass, and when we can connect the head to the heart, we experience the transcendent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such practice is also tied to his philosophy toward embracing cultural expressions within the liturgy<\/a>, as those who have attended liturgies at RECongress over the past 35 years can attest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only way to become more, to build community, is to give up a little of your own power, to give up your seat,\u201d said Flaherty, the son of a Japanese mother and an Irish-American father. \u201cIf, for example, we have a song in the Tongan language, we ask the Tongan choir to teach it to the rest of the singers, and we sing that together, rather than have one choir do this language song, and another choir do that language song, which is tokenism and not prayer. Because when we all sing together, regardless of the language, we form a new creation with all entering into the other\u2019s experience. That\u2019s how you build community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018We keep doing music that offers hope\u2019<\/p>\n

Rudy and Estela grew up in East Los Angeles parishes \u2014 he at St. Alphonsus, she at Our Lady of Guadalupe. Both were drawn to the guitar and parish music ministry before they were teens, and became music leaders before they were old enough to vote.<\/p>\n

They met when they were in their 20s, after Estela was hired as the Spanish choir director at St. Alphonsus and the pastor asked her to meet with the music director to prepare Holy Week music.<\/p>\n

\u201cI showed up for our meeting,\u201d she recalled, smiling, \u201cand this fellow walked in with a guitar, holes in his jeans and long poofy hair. That was Rudy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Rodolfo L\u00f3pez and Estela Garc\u00eda-L\u00f3pez met at East LA Catholic parishes and later got married. They now live in Portland. (Submitted photo)<\/p>\n

Suffice it to say, Estela and Rudy hit it off, professionally at first, composing an entire bilingual Easter Vigil Mass, and earning music degrees at Cal State Los Angeles. They were married 23 years ago, by which time they had moved to Portland, where they still reside.<\/p>\n

Estela is a specialist in music development at Oregon Catholic Press<\/a> and has sung on many recordings along with Rudy, who has produced many of those songs, some for OCP\u2019s \u201cFlor y Canto\u201d music hymnals. Both serve in music ministry at Portland-area parishes and present music workshops throughout the U.S.<\/p>\n

And they have contributed to the growth of bilingual music repertoire, with more than 90 pieces published by OCP, among them the collections \u201cBrille Tu Luz,\u201d \u201cCristo No Tiene Pies en el Mundo,\u201d and \u201cMisa Santa Cecilia\/Mass of Saint Cecilia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether you translate or compose bilingual or multilingual music,\u201d Rudy said, \u201cthere has to be a real element to it. It needs to be honest and accessible. That\u2019s the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also essential in parishes where multiple cultures exist or when some cultures face larger challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did see a drop in Mass attendance because of the ICE presence in our community,\u201d Estela said. \u201cThere are people living in fear, with supermarkets delivering groceries to homes because customers were not showing up. So at the parish, we keep doing music that offers hope, encouraging people to put their trust in the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n

They are delighted that their two young adult children, both music students at Portland State University, participate in music ministry, a testament to the couple\u2019s desire to nourish and form younger music ministers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no mentor when I was young, so I want to be there for the young people in our churches today,\u201d Estela said.<\/p>\n

Added Rudy: \u201cWe want very much to leave the liturgical world in a better place than we found it. Let\u2019s give young ministers a path to develop their gifts and to maintain the integrity of the liturgy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"author<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMike Nelson is the former editor of The Tidings (predecessor of Angelus).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three nationally known music ministers, all with ties to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, have been honored with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-279911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-la","9":"tag-la-headlines","10":"tag-la-news","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","13":"tag-los-angeles-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}