St Dominic’s and the Dominican stewards of a pilgrim’s sanctuary

Walking into St Dominic’s for the first time gave Fr Paul Rowse an instant sense of belonging. ‘I had to take a big, deep breath in. I knew I was home,’ Fr Paul says, recalling that visit as a very young man, one that firmed his resolve to join the Dominicans, the order entrusted with the stewardship of the Camberwell church.

‘I walked into the choir area—I can still visualise it, that’s how moving it was—and the arrangement of the choir stalls at the back of the church where we say the Divine Office, our prayers, each day was exactly like where I should be. I don’t often have those moments, but that was one.’

The Melbourne Dominicans were delighted, Fr Paul says, that the Archdiocese had identified St Dominic’s as a place of special focus for prayer, and designated it one of the Jubilee 2025 Pilgrim Places. It has ‘a happy reputation for being place of welcome, and especially for visiting people wanting to just catch Mass, go to Confession,’ he says.

‘So it’s very rare that our votive candle stands don’t have some candle lit on them at some point. We’re just one of those churches where people drift through.’

Fr Paul affectionately calls St Dominic’s a ‘no frills’ version of the Dominicans’ St Saviour’s Priory in Dublin—the founders of the order in Australia were from Ireland. But if the definition of ‘frills’ is Gothic arches and candlelit alcoves, stained-glass windows and an intriguing tower, St Dominic’s has all that too.

Fr Paul says pilgrims love St Dominic’s because ‘it’s a new church in a Gothic style’, having only been completed in 1960. ‘People still remember the tower going on, but it’s familiar enough and new enough to be accessible,’ he says.

‘I suppose they love the ambiance here. There are depths of prayer which are apparent to them when they arrive; the opportunity for private prayer, but also liturgical prayer. So they can come in, be by themselves, have their moment with the Lord or with one of the saints; and we have Mass several times a day, six times over the weekend, twice on weekdays.’

Various community groups have made the pilgrimage this year, including several Indonesian, Vietnamese and Polish community groups. ‘We haven’t had to change our timetable in the least to suit the Jubilee pilgrims. They have found that what we do is sufficient, or they come in a big group and have their own celebration themselves, both of which work for us.’

The Dominicans arrived in Australia at the end of the 19th century, establishing themselves first in Adelaide, then Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. The local province encompasses Australia and New Zealand, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. Fr Paul says they have developed a local flavour but remain true to their roots.

‘If I meet an Irish friar, it’s amazing how much simpatico there is with them,’ he says. ‘Culturally, we’re still very much an Irish province, which means we’re apostolic, more given to community. There’ll be more than just one priest working in the parish.

‘So although I am the parish priest and responsible for the good running of the parish, actually the pastoral life of the parish is taken up by the whole order, of which there are 12 of us here.’

He explains that the work and the charism of the Dominicans are different from those of other medieval orders. ‘Benedictines have a wonderful monastic life. The Franciscans have public churches, great service of the poor, great eremitical traditions—so they live a secluded form of life to embody the poor Christ.

‘Ours is funnier. It’s the work of extroverts done by introverts. Typically speaking, you don’t encounter extroverted Dominicans, but the order is meant to be out preaching, as our founder was, on the streets, and try to bring people to Christ by gentle persuasion.

‘The kind of person in Australia who seems to be attracted to the order is someone who is deeply reflective, cherishes deep personal friendships.’

This has both strengths and weaknesses in the modern world, Fr Paul says. They tend to have true encounters and form real connections by meeting people face to face. ‘The weakness is that we are missing people,’ he says. ‘We’re not grabbing people where they happen to be. Online is one place where they are.’

Their visibility, however, is a bonus. Dominican friars wear white robes and, when the occasion demands, a black cape known as a cappa. Reflecting on how they are received when making pastoral calls to the elderly, or as a chaplain to university students, for example, Fr Paul says the sight of a friar in his white habit is comforting.

‘There is a built-in approachability, I hope. The white habit of the Dominican Order speaks to openness, to innocence, to a desire for holiness.’

The founder of the Order of Preachers, as the Domincans are formally known, was St Dominic, a 13th-century Spanish saint. In the years before he established the order, he set out to convert the Cathars, a gnostic sect that the Church deemed heretical.

‘They believed in an evil god who made the material world,’ Fr Paul says. ‘And this meant that everything they did was designed to restrict and to punish the physicality of the human person. It’s a living death, a philosophy that really trapped them. And so St Dominic spent the rest of his life working to release people from that strange way of life.’

St Dominic’s Church has just celebrated the saint’s feast day, which is observed in Australia on 3 August. ‘It was a great celebration,’ says Fr Paul. ‘We had some very beautiful music. One of our parishioners is a professional mezzo soprano—she’s just wonderful. She organised for a group of her friends, who are fabulous musicians, to come and sing for us, and had a shared lunch afterwards. It would have been double the numbers at Mass that particular day.’

Such events are a sign of the health of the parish and of the Dominicans in Melbourne, despite the ageing of both church-goers and the friars.

‘We have an oversized Baby Boomer generation, as many orders do, and we will follow the same contours of demographics, but we will survive,’ he says. ‘We’re getting young men joining the order. We had a young man make his first vows with us just last month, a lovely fellow.

‘He’s one of a total of three students that we have at the moment—the other two, one’s from New Zealand, the other is from Melbourne—but all from lovely families, really good people.’

That is what pilgrims will find at St Dominic’s: really good people and a space for prayer and community. As Fr Paul puts it, the rhythms of St Dominic’s were already made for those seeking connection.