Four Leaders Honored as Fellows of The Hymn Society

Jan Michael Joncas, Raquel Mora Martínez, Mary Frances Reza, and Tina Schneider were recently honored as Fellows of The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada for outstanding leadership and significant contributions to congregational song. The new Fellows were recognized July 14 during the organization’s Annual Conference at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Jan Michael Joncas is a Roman Catholic priest, scholar, and composer who taught theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota for thirty years after earning his doctorate at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute in Rome. He has composed and recorded twenty-one collections of liturgical music and is best known for “On Eagle’s Wings” (1978), an adaptation of Psalm 91 regularly included among favorite hymns in surveys across Christian denominations. He has contributed numerous scholarly articles and authored several books, including From Sacred Song to Ritual Music (1997). He has recently published two collections of hymn texts for each Sunday and holy day of Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter.

Raquel Mora Martínez has long been a leading promoter of Spanish-language music in the United Methodist Church and wider ecumenical community. An organist, music director, and workshop leader, her landmark achievement was editing Para Celebrar (1996), the UMC’s official Spanish-language hymnal, characterized as “the most diverse Spanish-language hymnal of its time.” She recently edited Fiesta Jubilosa (2022), featuring more than one hundred of her hymn tunes and arrangements of Spanish-language hymns and English-language hymns frequently sung by Spanish speaking congregations.

Mary Frances Reza, often called the “godmother” of Catholic Hispanic liturgical music in the United States, was one of the most important figures in its development following Vatican II. She served as Director of Worship for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and played a pivotal role in publishing the first edition of Flor y Canto (1989), introducing ritual music and hundreds of liturgical songs from Latin America, Spain, and the U.S. She has composed several Mass settings and is well known for her psalm arrangements for Spanish-speaking and bilingual congregations.

Tina Schneider is a church musician, researcher, and librarian who has conducted significant hymnological research while supporting others’ work. She has served The Hymn Society as Director of Research and editor of the Dictionary of North American Hymnology, helping merge it into Hymnary.org. As library director at The Ohio State University Lima Campus, her recent research on Spanish-language hymnals has promoted recognition of women contributors to Spanish-language congregational song.