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Father Stephen Somerville suffers two strokes

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Father Stephen Somerville is a retired priest of the Archdiocese of Toronto. Please keep him in your prayers as in the last week, he has suffered two serious strokes. Father Somerville is also a musician and composer. He wrote the Good Shepherd Mass for the English liturgy in 1965 which was adapted in 1970 for the bowdlerised Gloria and Sanctus and then corrected back by St. Michael's Choir School in 2011. I enjoy every opportunity to sing his Responsorial Psalms in CBWII which are finely crafted based upon his authority in chant at St. Michael's Choir School. This weekend is the 50th anniversary of his first conducting of the Tenor/Bass Choir of St. Michael's at the annual Massey Hall Christmas Concert.

I have great memories of singing Handel's Messiah standing beside him in the Bass section a number of years ago in Etobicoke and singing his corrected Gloria translation with him at the piano just a few years ago when visiting him at St. Bernard's Convalescent Home. Father Somerville was also the Chaplain on the set of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

Please keep Father Somerville in your prayers. 

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