Stonyhurst’s Schola Cantorum visits Rome

Schola Cantorum with Ambassador Nigel Baker

Stonyhurst College’s Schola Cantorum has just returned from a very special tour to Rome, where they gave concerts in several splendid churches. Their concert in the Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva was attended by Nigel Baker, the British Ambassador to the Holy See, who was highly impressed by their polished and musical performance. The choir also sang in the richly decorated Church of Saint Ignazio, whose generous, spacious and resonant acoustic beautifully enhanced their programme of unaccompanied music, including Locus iste by Bruckner.

Singers of all ages at Stonyhurst sing in Schola Cantorum, Stonyhurst’s auditioned chamber choir directed by Dr Kevin Morgan. The tour was a fitting way for the world’s oldest surviving Jesuit school to mark the 200th anniversary of the re-founding of the Society of Jesus. A visit to the rooms of St Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Jesuits in 1534, was a particular highlight of the tour, where everyone spontaneously started to sing! Another unforgettable experience was seeing Pope Francis as he made his through the crowds outside St Peter’s.

Stonyhurst was founded in 1593 in St Omer and moved to its present site in Lancashire in 1794. It is a co-educational boarding and day school for pupils aged 3 to 18. For more information visit: www.stonyhurst.ac.uk/