In our interview with our (then) parish priest, Fr Paul Cleary, in the first edition of ‘Christian Traveller’, he indicated his desire to see the stained glass windows depicting the well known Jesuit saints, Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, repositioned into the body of the church. [Click here to see the windows ]. The 1973 extensions to the choir loft had obscured them and they were not readily visible, which seemed a pity for a church with such strong connections with the Jesuits. Now, if you look at the South wall of the church you will see Saints Ignatius and Francis in all their new glory thanks to the restoration work that has been done to the western section of the church.

Have a good look at them all. On the South wall of the original church there are the two Jesuits. If you go into the choir loft you will see another with a cross where it now occupies St Francis’s old position. On the North wall, starting from near the altar is a window with St John, then one of the Resurrection and in the choir loft, one depicting a guardian angel.

That portion of the window on the North wall showing St John is suspected to have come originally from another window and Fr Cleary is of the opinion that it was brought out from Europe. What do you think? The artist who repaired the windows has identified the three windows showing the guardian angel, St John and the cross as all being the work of Terry Beaton who worked in Adelaide between 1895 and 1910 and who ‘...was an ardent Catholic and the founder of the St Vincent de Paul Society in Adelaide.’

Fr Cleary points out that St Francis Xavier’s window is different from the others in that it has an ‘architectural’ theme - note the heavy portals surrounding St Francis - and he suggests that it may have come from Austria. A close inspection of the Resurrection shows it also to be different in that it does not have the same border detail.

If you will observe closely you will see the fine detail in the green borders around St John. A piece of this border must have been broken in the past as it had been replaced with solid green glass. You will not see it now as that has been replaced with glass painted with the same pattern but had you noticed it before? We are lucky that we have such beautiful stained glass windows in our church. It is well worth spending some time looking at them now that, thanks to Fr Paul’s persistence, they have been cleaned and repaired and restored to their old glory. Maybe, they are even better now, in 1995, than when originally installed.