Jesuit and Anglican choirs from London unite to sing in Rome’s historic churches

July 17, 2025

In early July, a joint choir from Farm Street Church, the Jesuit parish in Central London, and Grosvenor Chapel, a nearby Anglican church, was invited to Rome for a four-day sacred music pilgrimage as part of the 2025 Jubilee Year. Just days after the Feast of the Sacred Heart, the joint Catholic-Anglican choir offered music in some of the Eternal City’s most iconic churches, celebrating Christian unity through shared song and prayer.

Fr Dominic Robinson SJ, parish priest at Farm Street Church, co-led the pilgrimage alongside Fr Stephen Coleman, priest-in-charge at Grosvenor Chapel. Fr Dominic described the journey as an extension of Farm Street’s commitment to ecumenical friendship and spiritual renewal.

You can watch a video of the visit here.

Set against the backdrop of the ongoing 2025 Jubilee Year—an extraordinary time of grace and hope initiated by Pope Francis—the pilgrimage invited participants to experience the heart of Christian worship through chant, polyphony, and shared song. From the resonant walls of the Church of the Gesù, the Jesuit mother church, to the beautiful All Saints Anglican Church, and onward to historic Roman sites where centuries of liturgical music have been preserved and celebrated, the group explored music’s unique ability to cross boundaries and draw people closer to God.

This gathering wasn’t about theological debate but about listening and accompaniment. Fr Coleman helped foster moments of prayerful unity through choral evensong and sacred chant. Together, the pilgrims discovered how music can be a bridge, expressing faith in ways that words alone sometimes cannot.

For Fr Dominic and his parish community, this pilgrimage was more than a trip; it was a lived experience of Ignatian spirituality: finding God in beauty, accompanying others in faith, and singing a shared hope for the future. As the Jubilee Year continues, moments like these remind us that sacred music remains a vital language of reconciliation and renewal within the Church and beyond.

You can read coverage of this visit by EWTN Vatican here.

Photo by Chris Czermak on Unsplash

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