On 30 September, our music students on tour in Italy had the profound opportunity to sing during Mass at the Basilica di Santa Sabina. They found it extraordinarily moving to stand in the footsteps of 4th-century Christendom – seated in the very stalls where St Dominic himself once sang the Mass. The layout mirrored the chapel built by our own Dominican Sisters in Strathfield, and it was deeply humbling for our students to add their voices to a millennia-old resonance that still echoes through those sacred walls in Rome.
The Mass was celebrated in Italian and Latin (Missa de Angelis) supported by our organist Mr Jassen Rose who is augmenting our tour party. Our string quintet joined as the students offered some special Australian contributions of their own – including Here at the Table (Harvey), Ave Maria (Richardson) and Let Hope Arise (Viva La Speranza) – our 2025 Gala Concert and Jubilee Year anthem.
There were a few hundred people in attendance, members of the public, family, friends and a group of young Jesuits from Malta. They wrote to the students to share how deeply moved they were by the mass, expressing gratitude for the girls’ beautiful singing that ‘helped them to pray’.
Before Mass, the students strolled through the orange grove – the very one from which our own orange trees have come – and marvelled at its history and the place that the Basilica di Santa Sabina has in our story in Australia.
Our students are richer for this experience.
