Mary Immaculate parish at Bossley Park celebrated its patronal feast last weekend with a huge combined effort of the parishioners and the parish school.
Mass for the feast was preceded by a procession of a large statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary around the school and church grounds.
It was followed by a huge celebration with food and Christmas-themed performances by the students and ended with a spectacular fireworks display.
Mary Immaculate Primary School’s religious education coordinator Renee Cartwright said that the children had been working hard for weeks on songs and stories from John Burland’s Christmas al-bum after the musician had visited them for workshops.
“The charism of our school is Marian, so we thought we’d try and tell these stories of anticipation of Christ’s coming into the world from the perspective of Mary,” she said.
“The children have been really excited and because of COVID it’s the first time for many of our families to be able to participate in such an occasion so many parents are excited as well.”
Parish priest Danai Penollar said the happy occasion, celebrated on the weekend a few days prior to the 8 December feast day in order to allow more people to participate, was thanks to a great collaboration between the parish and the school, as well as the Filipino chaplaincy on site, which organised the statue and its base.
More than 800 were estimated to have attended the celebration.
