Omer Westendorf

Omer Westendorf was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 24, 1916. He studied at the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati and began a forty-year ministry as organist and choirmaster at St. Bonaventure Church in 1936. He also taught in Cincinnati schools, while his independent Bonaventure Choir gave concerts and made sacred-music recordings. During his World War II service in Europe, he encountered Mass settings in the Netherlands that were little known in the United States. Bringing that repertoire home helped redirect his career from performance alone toward publishing.

In 1950 Westendorf founded the World Library of Sacred Music, initially importing European church music from a garage. World Library Publications followed in 1957. The People’s Hymnal of 1955 developed into the People’s Mass Book in 1964, an early English-language Catholic worship resource responsive to the liturgical changes surrounding the Second Vatican Council. Westendorf wrote about thirty-five hymn texts, sometimes under the names Paul Francis, Mark Evans, and J. Clifford Evers. His other enduring texts include Where Charity and Love Prevail and Sent Forth by God’s Blessing.

Westendorf submitted Gift of Finest Wheat to the competition for the 1976 International Eucharistic Congress, where it was selected from more than two hundred entries. After leaving St. Bonaventure in 1976, he worked as a church-music consultant and lecturer. The National Association of Pastoral Musicians named him Pastoral Musician of the Year in 1985. He died in Cincinnati on October 22, 1997.