Solemn Vespers brought an enjoyable week of alumni events to a conclusion. There were long queues of people in Tom Quad hoping to secure a seat at the event – so Christ Church Cathedral was packed.

Normally the service would have been entitled Evensong, but, as the House is celebrating the 500th anniversary of Wolsey's foundation of Cardinal College in 1525, the service took the form of pre-Reformation Vespers.

Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe, from Blackfriars (the House of the Dominican order of Preachers in Oxford), represented the Catholics. The use of several large Television sets enabled members of the congregation to see the choir and clergy.

The service included several new musical compositions and concluded with a work by John Taverner, the Renaissance composer, who had been appointed by Wolsey to be the first Organist and Master of the Choristers at Cardinal College. Music from other Christ Church composers – William Harris, Thomas Armstrong, Simon Preston and Francis Grier – was sung, along with a newly-commissioned setting of the Magnificat by recently-appointed Master of the King's Music, Errollyn Wallen CBE (who also attended the service). At the end, choir and clergy processed down the nave and turned back to the shrine of St Frideswide, Patron Saint of Oxford. 

After the service, there was a reception in the Deanery garden in the evening sunshine. This provided another valuable opportunity for alumni networking and was an upbeat conclusion to a spiritual event.