
The outlook for an inspiring choral experience on the feast of St Anthony of Padua at St Mary’s Cathedral last week was hardly auspicious. It was, after all, Friday the 13th.
Uniformed school children filled the pews—all of them—right back to the southern entrance. Fidgeting boys elbowed each other, girls giggled softly, boys with ties askew and shirt-tails hanging out gawked at the stained-glass windows, and teachers looked daggers at whisperers.
Then the Mass began. “Peace be with you,” Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP sang. The sung response from 1100 children lifted the vaulted ceiling—“And with your spirit.” It was a bit like buying a ticket for the Woop Woop eisteddfod and getting the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
The fidgeting, giggling, gawking kids were entirely focused on the ancient and beautiful music of the Catholic Church. It was the Jubilate Deo Mass, a demonstration of the beauty and power of Gregorian chant.

And then came the words of the Kyrie eleison. The children’s voices translated the squares and squiggles of Gregorian musical notation into the beauty of the church’s soaring sacred music.
Ronan Reilly, the director of Jubilate Deo, a program which offers an introduction to sacred music for Catholic schools, parishes, young adults and clergy, radiates enthusiasm for Gregorian chant. “The point is that chant is the normative music of the church, just as Italian is what Italians speak; Gaelic is what the Irish speak; English is what those from England speak,” he told The Catholic Weekly. “So this is our language of prayer.”
With 2800 schoolchildren in the program, Sydney has become a world leader for proficiency in sacred music—a good position to be in as the 2028 Eucharistic Congress here approaches. By then there could be six or seven thousand participants.
Much of Archbishop Fisher’s homily may have gone over his listeners’ heads but it was a learned defence of the theological depth, the beauty and the evangelising power of Gregorian chant in the liturgy.

“As musical animals, beings that glorify God through worship, we are made in the image of that Song of God,” he said. “Sacred music draws us beyond ourselves, as all good music should, but towards the otherworldly, transcendent, divine, as only sacred music can.”
Gregorian chant is part of a tradition stretching back to the early Christians, to the Old Testament figures of David and Solomon, to Moses, and to the patriarch Jubal, “the ancestor of all who play the lyre and the reed pipe.”
King David, the archbishop dad-joked, “even wrote the first ‘rock’ song, The Lord is My Rock.”
“Some of your peers might think it quirky for you to be singing ‘olde mouldy’ church music,” he told the children.
“They probably only know music of the last decade or two. But you are much more adventurous, stretching back two or three thousand years, to the music of Moses and David, of Jesus, Mary and Paul, all the way forward to today. It’s timeless music, a beautiful art form.”

Archbishop Fisher ended his homily by encouraging the children to “go out as ‘labourers to the harvest’ and announce the nearness of God’s Kingdom through your music.”
He also had a surprise announcement. He read a letter from the Vatican, from the head of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, Fr Robert Mehlhart OP, endorsing the work of the Jubilate Deo Program. “We’re very chuffed,” Reilly said later.
The Mass ended on an extraordinary note. Under Reilly’s calm direction, hundreds of young voices from a dozen or so schools burst into an exultant composition by 17th century German musician Michael Praetorius. Jubilate Deo! Jubilate, Jubilate, Jubilate Deo, Alleluia! Sing joyfully to God, indeed. The teachers’ daggers melted into smiles.
A good number of the children from some schools were not Catholic. But they still enjoyed learning Gregorian chant. Carolynne Cavanagh, a teacher at St Jerome’s Punchbowl, said that the Jubilate Deo program had been a “game-changer.”
“I remember back in 2019 when Ronan encouraged me to commence sacred music workshops,” she told The Catholic Weekly.

“Now I know it’s one of the best things that we’ve done with the students at our school. Their engagement in Mass, their active participation and their love for the Mass, has increased dramatically since the introduction of the program.”
“We’ve have had a number of children who’ve been baptised,” she added. “Their willingness comes partly through this program and learning about the faith, helping to draw them in.”
This sacred music is already working its magic.