The Catholic Cathedral Parish was established at Pentecost 2020, amalgamating the former Cathedral parish and St Francis of Assisi parish in Mairehau. See the histories of each parish below, each a rich tapestry weaving the city’s catholic history. Many thanks to Mike Crean for the histories below.
The new Catholic Cathedral Parish is based at St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, on Manchester St.
Further information on the the parish is available on their website Catholic Cathedral Parish.
A Cathedral Parish
A parish is by definition a “subdivision of a diocese having its own church and clergy” – (Collins Concise Dictionary).
The first semblance of a Catholic Parish in Christchurch was based on Barbadoes Street. Before Christchurch became a parish it was the headquarters of a Mission Station from which Marist missionaries served most of the South Island and Stewart Island. They trekked the rugged hills and plains on horseback and on foot.
Christchurch was part of the Wellington Diocese until 1887. With increasing numbers of Catholic immigrants, including more priests, Wellington’s Bishop Redwood gained approval from the Pope to create the Christchurch Diocese. That was in 1887, when Bishop Grimes arrived from England to head the new diocese.
The first Christchurch Parish extended to all parts of the scattered infant city. Almost immediately a second parish was created. This was St Mary’s, situated on Manchester Street. People referred to it as the “north parish”, though it was only 11 city blocks north of the site where the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament was to be built. The Avon River formed part of the boundary line that divided the city’s two Catholic parishes.
Shiploads of immigrants landed at Lyttelton Port for the next six decades, causing great growth in the city. Such development spawned new parishes around the city. These enabled the boundaries of Cathedral and St Mary’s parishes to shrink. The parishes in Christchurch and in rural areas lasted for over a century. Then, in 2011-2013, a spate of catastrophic earthquakes forced changes again. The biggest change came from Bishop Martin’s policy of amalgamating parishes, from 2020, when St Francis of Assisi parish amalgamated with the then Cathedral parish.
Developments around Christchurch are not the beginning of the Catholic story, though. This begins with French settlers arriving at Akaroa in the early 1840s. Most were Catholic and they wanted priests to serve them. Two attempts to establish a Catholic Mission at Akaroa were tried but failed. However, French missionary priests visited the settlement up to 1860. The early ones were Marist priests, Fr Seon SM and Fr Chataigner SM. (SM stands for Society of Mary, a French Order, known also as The Marists). The hardy missionaries brought Mass, the sacraments, and guidance in the Faith to Akaroa and to scattered Catholic settlers through much of the South Island.
Long before Christchurch became a diocese, stately Catholic churches opened. The Akaroa Church was built in 1865 – and is still in use. Other churches opening that year include those at Lyttelton and Brackenfield. The latter was shifted by traction-engine to Amberley 90 years later. It still stands there.
As numbers of Catholic immigrants and priests arrived, the Marist Order subdivided the South Island Mission. From 1860 Fr Seon’s and Fr Chataigner’s territory was reduced to North, Central, Mid and South Canterbury. This land extended from the Hurunui River to the Waitaki River, and included much of the West Coast. This territory should seem familiar; it is roughly the current extent of the Christchurch Diocese.
This territory remained a Mission as no diocese or bishop existed in this area yet. Canterbury remained part of the Wellington Diocese. Meanwhile, Catholic population patterns led to more changes in the South Island Mission. A new missionary base was established at Timaru in 1869 It was to serve all of South Canterbury and about half of Mid-Canterbury. The Christchurch Mission’s southern boundary was shifted to the Ashburton River. Three years later the Christchurch Mission itself was divided into Town and Country zones.
All this while Christchurch was expanding rapidly. The “First Four Ships” had sailed into Lyttelton Harbour in 1850. For nearly 40 years the towns of Lyttelton and Christchurch had grown significantly. But there was still no Catholic bishop or diocese, and so no parish, in Canterbury. The region was still served by a Catholic Mission and governed by Wellington’s Bishop Redwood SM. However, as early as 1881 Bishop Redwood was preparing his case to convince the Pope that a new diocese should be created to serve all of Canterbury and part of the West Coast.
Christchurch City had the Blessed Sacrament Church, on Barbadoes Street, but it was too small for the numbers attending Mass. Alterations were made to seat 1000 people but soon this was insufficient too. Outlying areas of the city, such as Papanui, Addington and Halswell, had “outposts” where priests could gather congregations.
But change was underway. Bishop Redwood instructed the Christchurch Mission Rector, Fr Ginaty SM, to find a suitable site for a second city church, in1881. This was achieved and St Mary’s Church was built on Manchester Street in 1885. Now Bishop Redwood was seeking a suitable priest to be made a bishop who would launch the Diocese of Christchurch, replacing the Christchurch Mission.
A fellow Marist priest, the English Fr Grimes SM, was consecrated a Bishop and sent to New Zealand, arriving in1888. He established the Christchurch Diocese, Cathedral Parish, and St Mary’s Parish. With the two parishes so close to each other, Bishop Grimes is said to have taken much time deciding which would be the better location for the cathedral to be built.
The Bishop decided the existing Blessed Sacrament Church would be the Pro-Cathedral. It would be moved a few metres to the north to allow a new cathedral to be built on the former site. Building of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament began in 1901 and was completed in 1905. It was often called the Basilica.
Fortunately, the pro-cathedral was a timber structure and so could be moved. It is said Bishop Grimes insisted the new church for St Mary’s Parish also be of timber so it could be moved if he opted for the Manchester Street site. Thus, the St Mary’s Church was built of timber. It was opened in 1891 and was replaced by the current brick building in 1957.
St Mary's Parish
Christchurch North was the second Catholic parish established in Christchurch. Its name referred to its position, about 2km north of Christchurch South parish. It became better known as St Mary’s. The North Parish was founded in 1889 on land that senior priest Dean Ginaty SM had procured. The Manchester Street site was well inside the city’s central “Four Avenues” area.
A growing Catholic population had made it necessary to split the original Christchurch Parish. It was divided into South and North parishes. A boundary line between them was set. It included a long stretch of the Avon River. In spite of the river’s bends and loops, the boundary was clear. A kink in the line was made so the Hornby area could be part of North Parish.
The priests in the Catholic Diocese of Christchurch, including Bishop Grimes, were all Marists at that time. The Marist Order established the New Zealand Province of the Society of Mary. The Province decided Marist priests should establish and run North Parish. Fittingly, then, North Parish was named in honour of St Mary. More parishes would appear in the city’s outlying suburbs in later years. These parishes, such as Papanui, would reduce the size of North Parish.
Bishop Grimes offered the Marist Fathers “permanent responsibility” for St Mary’s. This was accepted and The Marists ran North Parish for more than a century.
The first Parish Priest appointed to St Mary’s held the magnificent name of Fr Theophile Le Menant des Chesnais SM (Society of Mary). On April 1,1889, he moved into a large house on the corner of Manchester and Salisbury streets. Sisters of the Good Shepherd had been using the house as a temporary convent. They vacated the house and moved into their newly built Mt Magdala complex near Halswell.
Fr Le Menant Chesnais converted two unused parlours on the front of the house into a chapel. There the French priest said the first Mass for North Parish on April 5, 1889. Congregations grew quickly and soon Catholics attending Mass at the chapel were “spilling out over the verandah”, historian Fr M O’Meeghan SM wrote. A new brick presbytery was built in 1903.
Because of the over-crowding, Bishop Grimes authorised St Mary’s Parish in 1890 to build a proper church. He set two conditions for this. The church must be built of timber so it could be moved later if required, and it must be so designed that the building could later be converted for school purposes. The new wooden church, able to seat 500-or more people, was completed in 1891 – a remarkable feat as many of the lay people were poor and raising money was difficult. The wooden church was replaced in 1957 when the present brick church was built.
Meanwhile parishioners and the clergy were wanting Catholic education in the parish. A request was made to the Mercy Sisters in Greymouth. In 1894 six Sisters travelled by ship around the bottom of the South Island and up to Lyttelton. They launched a primary school at St Mary’s with only six pupils at first. Numbers soon multiplied and St Mary’s Primary School is still teaching girls and boys.
The Mercy Sisters also launched a short-lived upper-primary girls’ college, and a secondary college. The latter opened in 1929 for male and female students. From 1947 it was restricted to females only and, in 1981, it became part of McKillop College, in Shirley. This later became Marian College, now in Papanui.
As well as teaching children and adolescents, the Mercy Sisters developed a novitiate at St Mary’s, preparing young women to become Sisters. This institution was moved to Villa Maria College, at Upper Riccarton, in 1918.
These and other developments in North Parish enlarged the complex greatly, over about 120 years. The 1957 church became the Pro-Cathedral after the Canterbury earthquakes. Other notable buildings were: a spacious presbytery, a large convent, a classic Sisters’ chapel, two schools, a playground, a hall, a parish office and shop.
St Francis of Assisi Parish
More marriages, more births, more immigrants, more removals from country to city – these were elements of the “Post-War Baby Boom”. World War II ended in September, 1945. In the following weeks thousands of New Zealand military personnel returned home. Many had been overseas for up to five years.
A major effect was the rapid increase in population, firstly in returnee numbers, then in the growing birth rate. This was most notable in the Christchurch suburb of Mairehau. In just a few years this thinly populated northern part of the city became an expanse of family homes.
Catholic Bishop Lyons of Christchurch foresaw this development and acted quickly. In 1945 he bought 2.4 hectares of land halfway along Innes Road. This would become the centre of the new Mairehau Parish. It would take pressure off existing nearby parishes, St Mary’s in the city and St Joseph’s in Papanui. The bishop also “cut off” a part of St Mary’s to be attached to the new parish, which would be founded in 1952.
The speed of the baby boom was reflected in the development of Mairehau. Housing density grew hugely within 20 years. So did Mairehau Parish. It was named and dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima in reference to her miraculous appearances to a group of children at Fatima, in Portugal, in 1917. The parish extended laterally from Cranford Street to Marshland Road and North Parade.
Bishop Lyons bought a second block of land in the neighbouring suburb of Shirley in 1947. This would be part of Mairehau Parish too. He “imported” more priests from Ireland. Four years later he appointed one of these, the dynamic Fr William O’Mahony, as first Parish Priest. Building of the church was completed in 1952. It was a simple structure, planned to become a hall when the parish would be able to afford a more graceful church.
Fr O’Mahony once commented that Mairehau was “unique in the history of the Diocese of Christchurch”. In every other new parish a church had already been standing and the parish had grown around it. In Mairehau the opposite applied, he said.
As child numbers grew, a Catholic primary school was wanted. Work began and the first classroom was blessed and opened in 1954. Two lay-teachers ran the school that year. Early in 1955 seven Sisters of the Holy Faith arrived from Ireland and staffed the growing school. A new convent for them was opened and blessed in 1956.
More buildings were erected at the school in 1957. Then teaching began also in a pre-fabricated building at Emmett Street, Shirley. So much had the congregation grown that its first assistant priest, Fr Kevin Clark, was appointed to the parish. A second church, dedicated to St Pius X, was opened in Shirley, in 1975.
A parish with two priests, two churches, a school, a convent and seven sisters was a substantial enterprise – and this one had been founded only a few years earlier.
A document in the Archives of the Catholic Diocese of Christchurch states that: “Fr O’Mahony faced two under-developed properties, a ramshackle house, and no funding”. Funding was an ongoing problem. Mairehau was an area of little affluence. Numbers of parishioners grew to about 800 in the early years. They donated money “on the plate” each Sunday, ran fundraising fairs and raffles, laboured at working bees, supported the Sisters and paid fees for the school pupils. The introduction of a Planned Giving Programme in 1963 became a big help.
Church schools received very little government funding then. This improved in 1981 when Our Lady of Fatima School was integrated into the State School system. Costs of upgrading schools to required government standards were high. Also, the parish still had to meet all costs relating to grounds and buildings.
The long-term aim of building a new church was discussed seriously in 1983. The decision to go ahead was made in 1984 but construction did not begin until 1987. The delay was caused by a deeply vexed debate over financing the new church. Parishioners learned of the highly inflated costs they would face. A sheaf of letters sent by parishioners to the bishop (now in the archives) contained many hard-hitting views on the matter.
The bitterness had flared when a proposal was made to sell a third of the school’s playing field to fund the new church. The Sisters and many parishioners strongly opposed the idea. Parish historian Phil O’Malley writes of the “great division” this caused among the people.
At last, in 1986, a counter proposal was accepted. This involved other financing means, including an increased diocesan loan and the sale of land in Shirley. The tension ebbed, the anti-playground sale group had won, O’Malley says.
Acrimony faded as the new church opened in 1988. The old church was adapted to become a hall, as planned from the start. Meanwhile, St Pius X Church in Shirley was closed in 2007. The new Mairehau church, facing Innes Road, was attractive and cleverly designed to keep costs down to $400,000. Sadly though, the 2010-2011 Christchurch earthquakes destroyed it.
St Paul’s Church in the neighbouring Dallington Parish also was wrecked. Quake damage spelt the end for both Mairehau and Dallington parishes, as the decision to combine them was made in 2012. The result was a new, enlarged parish named in dedication to St Francis of Assisi.
Even bigger changes were to follow. With Sunday mass congregations and priests’ numbers declining throughout the diocese, Bishop Paul Martin executed a plan to amalgamate the city’s parishes by 2023. Twelve parishes were reduced to five. As part of this, the Parish of St Francis of Assisi merged with Cathedral Parish.
While it may be said that Mairehau Parish had grown rapidly, so did it slip speedily into history.
St Paul's Parish, Dallington
Dallington Catholic Parish suffered more from Christchurch’s 2010-2011 earthquakes than any other parish. Damage was both physical and communal. The complex of buildings was ruined and a decade later remains a wasteland. Other damage was in the spirit of priests, nuns and laity, as the parish community was splintered.
St Paul’s Dallington sat on the eastern side of the city, close to the Avon River. The area along the river particularly was devastated. Much of the land became known as the Red Zone where buildings were trashed and, a decade later, no new ones were allowed to be built. This area was the homeland of many Dallington parishioners. After 60 years their parish was no more.
Letters and other documents in the Catholic Diocese of Christchurch Archives indicate the special character of Dallington’s faithful. The parish was vividly alive and reverent. Members were active and generous in supporting many causes.
Before the parish of St Paul was created, in 1951, it already had an active church community. In earlier times Dallington was part of New Brighton Parish. As a region, Dallington was more a rural frontier than a city suburb. However, from the early 1900s more and more people moved into the area. Many were Catholics. Getting to New Brighton was no easy matter for them.
Bishop Brodie realised this. He bought a section of land on Gayhurst Road, Dallington, in 1925. He had a small chapel built there and paid for it from his own money. He dedicated the chapel to St Paul. A priest from New Brighton came each Sunday to say Mass there.
In the Great Depression, circa 1928-1935, little more was done. In 1934, the dynamic Fr T O’Regan was appointed Parish Priest for the newly named New Brighton-Dallington Parish. Within a year he had launched the building of a primary school on newly acquired land near the chapel on Gayhurst Road. Sisters of Our Lady of the Mission travelled daily from the Sacred Heart Convent, near the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, to teach at the new St Paul’s school. Staffing changed to Sisters of St Joseph in 1955. Their Juniorate on North Parade, Shirley, was in the Dallington Parish.
The Dallington branch of this parish grew rapidly in post-World War II years. Funds increased too, allowing extensions to both the church and the school. Bishop Joyce declared the separate parish of St Paul’s Dallington, in 1951. A presbytery was built in the same year.
Fr O’Regan managed the growth of the parish, cleverly financing developments but avoiding debt. Fund-raising from the increasing numbers of parishioners, and willing donations from various parish groups, were a major aid.
A grand new church replaced the former one, which was converted into extra classrooms, in 1957. A spacious parish hall came next. More land was bought on Gayhurst Road, where a new presbytery replaced the “old” one. Other projects included additions to the church foyer, parish offices, meeting rooms, and landscaping.
Dallington was seen as a model for parish management and Fr O’Regan as the manager. Ill health forced him to retire as Parish Priest in 1968. He had served in New Brighton and Dallington for 48 years. Now he wanted to return to his family in County Wicklow, Ireland. At his farewell he declared, “My heart will always be in the Parish of Dallington.” Bishop Joyce noted the priest’s “financial acumen that amounted to genius”. He added that Fr O’Regan had achieved all his objectives for the parish and left it without debt. He made many charitable donations to needy families.
St Paul’s continued in similar vein with a series of senior priests. These included a future bishop, Fr D Hanrahan. None, of course, could foresee the coming earthquakes.
Parishioners were still mourning the death of popular Parish Priest Fr M O’Malley when the first of many quakes struck on 4th September, 2010. Rated at 7.1 on the seismic scale, this quake caused widespread damage throughout the area. The church of St Paul, its associated buildings, and the very ground were marked as dangerous and unusable. St Paul’s primary school roll was then approaching 300 pupils.
Only a small chapel and office were safe and mid-week Masses were said there. The new Parish Priest, Fr S Eccleton, found a house to rent and the parish carried on. Repairs to essential buldings began and costs started to soar. Archive documents show the immediate parish repairs cost $18,040.
These costs included such items as: supply and fitting of installations, replacement of electric wiring, new storage cupboards, and many others. The parish donated $2860 to the neighbouring parish at Mairehau. Their generosity was mirrored by practical aid and cash offers from all over the world.
After hundreds of after-shocks, an even bigger quake hit Christchurch on 22nd February, 2011. Parishioners agonised over ripped and torn asphalt courts, deep crevasses, buildings shaking, tilting and crumbling. Part-skeletons of buildings had to be demolished. All was wrecked.
Fr Eccleton continued Masses at Marian College, on the south-east corner of the parish. Many parishioners gathered there. As they talked about the future, the strongest chord was “a new church will be built”. It was not to be. Instead, St Paul’s merged with Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Mairehau. The modern church there was demolished, so the hall returned to its former function as the church.
St Paul’s school was temporarily based in the former Xavier College classrooms, next to Catholic Cathedral College. Then it moved to Ministry of Education buildings on Champion Street, St Albans. As the parishes of Dallington and Mairehau had merged, so did their respective schools. St Paul and Our Lady of Fatima Schools united under the name of St Francis of Assisi School. It stands at Mairehau.
More mergers were to come. Bishop Paul Martin amalgamated all Christchurch City parishes, forming five large new parishes. St Francis of Assisi became part of Cathedral Parish, centred on St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, in 2020.
