Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament

Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament (1901-05)

The southern bastion of Irish Catholicism

You have George Bernard Shaw’s word on it. This is/was Christchurch’s finest building. In 1934 when the writer stopped at Christchurch on his New Zealand tour, he extravagantly praised a cathedral he had just seen, comparing it favourably to the work of the great Italian renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi. His listeners assumed he meant the Anglican cathedral in the Square. No, he said, he was talking about the other one, down by the (now demolished) gasworks, Francis William Petre’s big basilica.

By then most had forgotten the building’s difficult birth. ‘Lord Concrete’, as they called Petre, was often absent during the construction period and Bishop Grimes, short-tempered and a born interferer, claimed that Petre had misled him about the true cost of the Wunderlich ceiling, Whatever the cause, Grimes got Richard Seddon to rush a special bill through Parliament so the money needed to complete the building could be borrowed.

The towers, cupolas and domes of Petre’s basilicas stud the South Island’s eastern seaboard. You will find magnificent examples in Dunedin (St Patrick’s, South Dunedin, 1879-94), Oamaru (St Patrick’s, 1893-1918), Timaru (Basilica of the Sacred Heart, 1910) as well as Waimate’s St Patrick’s church (1908-09, tower 1912), along with many other fine ecclesiastical buildings. Although they reflect Petre’s genius, they also remind us of the wealth of the South Island and of the importance of the Catholic Church there a century ago, As we saw with Pompallier, Catholics were not always welcome in colonial New Zealand, and Irish Catholics even less so. But the gold rushes brought large numbers into New Zealand through the Australian colonies, adding people to the wealth being amassed by a Catholic clique of big pastoralists. The proportion of Catholics who attended church regularly rose from about 40% in 1880 to 60% in 1920.

Then came an act of God. On 4 September 2010 a magnitude 7.1 earthquake severely damaged this and many other historic buildings in and around Christchurch. Worse was to come. On 22 February 2011 a shallower shock munted the building. Aftershocks increased the damage.  Engineers have removed some items from the wrecked building, which remains fenced off, too dangerous to enter. Its ultimate fate is unknown.

Further information

This site is item number 73 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

• Heritage New Zealand List
• Christchurch City Libraries
• Catholic Diocese of Christchurch
• Irish Catholics in New Zealand - Te Ara
• Francis Petre biography - Te Ara
• Big repair job for Christchurch (video)