Senior students preparing Empire Youth Sunday, 1951
Senior students preparing for their march through the city to St Patrick’s Cathedral, on Empire Youth Sunday, 1951
Loyalty to God and country were uppermost. In 1951 Loreto Toorak students processed with the Pilgrim Statue of Our Lady of Fatima and marched on Empire Youth Sunday. The Loreto Toorak choir was selected to sing at the Exhibition Buildings during the 1953 National Eucharistic Congress in honour of the visit to Australia of Cardinal Valerian Gracias of Bombay. The 1954 Marian Year was celebrated with great gusto at Loreto Toorak through pageants, competitions and processions. In 1953 five buses were needed to transport the girls to the Windsor Theatre to view film of the Queen’s coronation, and the senior students attended a coronation pageant at the Exhibition Buildings. When the Queen came to Australia in the following year students caught the tram down to Chapel Street to wave as the royal cavalcade passed by.
Catholics were exhorted to remain faithful, as mutual antagonism between Protestants and Catholics was widespread. Catholic traditions were strictly adhered to: attending Mass on Sundays, observing special feast days, not eating meat on Fridays, going to confession, attending the local mission and sending children to Catholic schools. Participation in the St Patrick’s Day march held an almost equal status to that of attending Sunday Mass. Archbishop Mannix gave constant warnings about the inroads of communism within Victoria’s democratic society, repeating them almost to the exclusion of an equally great threat – the crisis in the Catholic education system.