Today Pope Francis will preside at Vespers in the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls for the closing of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. For this special occasion, the Sistine Chapel choir will be joined by the Westminster Abbey choir, one of the finest choral music groups of its kind.
Ahead of this unprecedented event, the two choirs gave a free concert in the Basilica of St John Lateran on Tuesday evening . Their collaboration grows out of recent years of deepening Anglican-Catholic relations, in particular following Pope Benedict XVI's visit to London in September 2010.
In an interview with Philippa Hitchen, for Vatican Radio, Dean of Westminster Abbey, the very Reverend Dr John Hall, explains that while the abbey was founded in the year 960, the choir came into existence in the 14th century to sing in a newly built chapel of the abbey dedicated to Our Lady. When the Benedictine monks who founded the abbey, left at the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1540, the lay men and boys of the choir remained and have been singing for daily services there ever since.
Today the choir is made up of 12 adult singers, known as lay vicars and some 30 boys who are educated in the adjacent abbey choir school.
The partnership with the Sistine Chapel choir traces its origins to the September 17th 2010 visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the abbey for Evensong, a liturgy which he said he enjoyed very much. That was followed by a visit of the Dean to Monte Cassino in 2011 and on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul on June 29th 2012, the abbey choir came to Rome as the first choir to sing together with the Sistine Chapel choir.
Dr Hall said that when the abbey choir sang inside the Sistine Chapel in 2012, Cardinal Bertone, the former Vatican Secretary of State and he both underlined that it was a "really important moment in ecumenical relations." He says it shows that "we've moved from sitting opposite each other........to walking and singing together", ensuring that the necessary theological dialogue can be "set in a context of friendship, collaboration and above all.....of worshipping together."
