Somewhere in a factory in northern Italy, an Indigenous Australian image of the Holy Spirit is being fashioned onto the back of specially designed World Youth Day chasubles.

The 700 chasubles — the outer garment that covers the celebrant from the neck down — will be worn by Cardinals and Bishops celebrating the Opening and Final Masses of World Youth Day in Sydney in July.

The image of the Holy Spirit was originally painted by Marjorie Liddy, a Tiwi woman from the Melville Islands in the Northern Territory.

"One day, Marjorie was fishing in a remote, beautiful area. She stayed longer than she intended. The moon came out and she rang her son to come and pick her up. She looked up and saw a bird in the sky made of stars. Around its head was a gold crown," Sr Rosemary said.

"Marjorie said to her son: ‘Look up in the sky; what can you see?’ He said: ‘Mum, I can see stars’, but he couldn’t see the bird. She told me that when she saw it, she began to sing.

"She wasn’t a painter so Marjorie went and spoke to a woman she knew at an arts centre and asked her to paint it. When the artist produced the image, Marjorie said: ‘No, that’s not my bird. That’s not what I saw.’ So she went out and did the only painting of her life."

The World Youth Day Sydney office created prayer cards last year with the image, entitled ‘The Day the Holy Spirit visited Marjorie and her people’.

Sr Rosemary collaborated with Fr Peter Williams, the WYD08 director of Liturgy and graphic design firm Stuart Pettigrew Design, to design the vestments.

"We want to ensure we reflect our unique landscape, history and cultural influences when the international spotlight is on Sydney for this great event," Fr Williams said.

To this end, Fr Williams said, the vestments would be an ‘earthy red’ colour to reflect the Australian landscape, and would feature the Southern Cross on the front, signifying Australia as the ‘Great Southern Land of the Holy Spirit’.

The chasubles are currently being produced in Bergamo, in northern Italy, by Solivari, a company that specialises in liturgical vestments. Sr Rosemary said they had hoped the chasubles would be made in Australia on Australian wool, but the costs and the short time frame proved to be unsurmountable. Solivari was able to produce the garments in the short time available.

About 3000 stoles — the strip of cloth worn around the neck that hangs down past the waist — will also be made for priests and deacons to use throughout the WYD08 week.