Bonne anniversaire! Maria Fidelis School choir celebrate 180th birthday at Westminster Cathedral

Published: 25th November, 2010
by JAMIE WELHAM

GOSPEL singers from the award-winning choir at Maria Fidelis School led celebrations to mark the school’s founding by French settlers who had fled from the revolution.

More than 1,000 pupils, teachers and representatives from sister schools around the country crammed into the pews of Westminster Cathedral to mark 180 years since Marie Madeleine D’Houet’s religious order of Sisters arrived in Somers Town and set up the school.

It earned the area the nickname “Little France”.

The secondary school in Phoenix Road is still run by the Faithful Companions of Jesus Sisters, taking its current name in the 1970s from what was then St Aloysius Convent Grammar School.

It is one of the oldest girls’ Catholic schools in the capital and was recently crowned School Choir of the Year by in a BBC Songs of Praise competition.

Sister Gertrude Hodkinson said: “It was a great day. We thanked God for 180 years of service to Catholic education in London. As well as teaching in Maria Fidelis, the Sisters are still involved in education and parish life, and are also working in centres for immigrants, hospital and prison chaplaincies and retreat centres throughout the world.”