A RETIRED priest, a tour guide, a volunteer at a homeless shelter and an office manager were commissioned as St Stephen’s Cathedral guides and welcomers by Dean Fr Anthony Mellor at a Mass yesterday.
The newly commissioned guides and welcomers were Britanny Lee, Luisa Wriedt, Vivian Puccini-Scuderi and retired Brisbane priest Fr Joe Duffy.
Ms Lee, who volunteers at Emmanuel City Mission drop-in centre, had many beautiful moments at the cathedral in the six months leading up to her conversion to Catholicism earlier this year.
She was baptised in the cathedral on April 3.
“I really fell in love with the space and it’s really helped me connect with my faith,” she said.
Becoming a guide grew out of that.
“I love the history of this place, I love the architecture, and I really think at the cathedral we have this unique ability to connect people outside of our faith,” she said.
“They look in and they think’ ‘Oh wow what is this place’, and you can say, ‘Actually it’s a Catholic Cathedral’, and maybe evangelise as well, that’s why I joined.”
Ms Wriedt, who was a tour guide all around Australia, became jobless after the pandemic struck the tourism industry.
“I just needed to be with people,” she said.
“To communicate and this was somewhere I could come, to the cathedral, and I wanted to extend that into being a guide.”
She said she loved the stories in the windows of the cathedral, especially the way the colours dazzle when the light hits them.
Mrs Puccini-Scuderi, who was interviewed by The Catholic Leader earlier this year, said she loved the history and the artifacts of the cathedral.
“I love the fact that this is an oasis in the middle of the city,” she said.
“So many people come here as a nice quiet place to have their lunch, it’s a gem.”
Fr Duffy said he had a real affection for the history of the diocese and the “cathedral exemplifies that”.
He said the training to become a guide and welcomer was like “revisiting my theology course”.
“It was more than learning about the cathedral, it was also learning about the Second Vatican Council and its impact on the lives of ordinary Catholics like ourselves today,” he said.
“We had some excellent lecturers visiting.”
Fr Duffy was ordained at the cathedral in 1969.
“It was a very different story then,” he said.
“The cathedral was in a state of disrepair; it was not a tidy place and we had a pride in it, but not in the state that it was in.
“Over my 50 years as a priest in the diocese, I’m so glad it has been restored and given a place of honour it deserves.”
His favourite part about the cathedral was the organ, “all 2500 pipes”.
