On Thursday, September 13, 1917, a Sydney newspaper, the Catholic Press, reported on one of the “most notable and impressive ceremonies and gatherings that have ever been held within the walls” of St Mary’s Cathedral. The great and the good of the city had assembled to mark the centenary of the founding of the Marist Brothers in France. The Archbishop of Sydney had conducted a Solemn High Mass at 10am and “as far as the eye could search in that vast interior not a single unoccupied space was discernible”. This, the report concluded, was a suitable tribute to the “famed teaching order … the fruits of whose noble and self-sacrificing work are to be found in every corner of the civilised world, and even elsewhere”.