The Catholic Media Convention in New Orleans last week featured some great music, including jazz trios and street performers. But my personal favorite came from Veronica Downs-Dorsey and the Voices of Peter Claver, a Catholic choir from the city’s St. Peter Claver Church. These men and women provided Gospel music for the opening Mass of the Convention, and their powerful voices prompted admiration from many, including Peter Finney Jr., executive editor of the Clarion Herald. “This church was rebuilt because of its shaky foundations,” he said of Immaculate Conception Church, where the Mass was celebrated. “After this Mass, we may have to check the foundations again.”

Listen to a short recording from the Mass here.

Kerry Weber

Kerry Weber joined the staff of America in October 2009. Her writing and multimedia work have since earned several awards from the Catholic Press Association, and in 2013 she reported from Rwanda as a recipient of Catholic Relief Services' Egan Journalism Fellowship. Kerry is the author of Mercy in the City: How to Feed the Hungry, Give Drink to the Thirsty, Visit the Imprisoned, and Keep Your Day Job (Loyola Press) and Keeping the Faith: Prayers for College Students (Twenty-Third Publications). A graduate of Providence College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she has previously worked as an editor for Catholic Digest, a local reporter, a diocesan television producer, and as a special-education teacher on the Navajo reservation in Arizona.