St Gerard's Church and Monastery, Gothic religious complex on Mount Victoria in Wellington, New Zealand.
St Gerard's Church and Monastery is a brick and concrete religious complex built in a Gothic style on Mount Victoria in Wellington, New Zealand. It consists of a church building and a three-story monastic residence set on a hillside overlooking the city.
The Redemptorists reached Wellington in 1882 and from 1908 lived in James Edward Fitzgerald's sixteen-room house on this site. They replaced it with John Swan's brick church, opened in 1908 and the first anywhere dedicated to Gerard Majella. The monastery followed in 1932, funded by public donations, with the foundation stone laid by Archbishop Redwood. The Redemptorists sold the complex in 1988; the ICPE Mission bought it in 1992 and sold it again in 2023.
The church was the first in the world dedicated to Gerard Majella, a Redemptorist lay brother canonised in 1904. Pope Pius X gave the Wellington church an oil painting of "St Gerard in Ecstasy" by Giovanni Gagliardi, painted in Rome for the saint's 1893 beatification and carried in procession through Rome in 1904. The Redemptorists ran novenas, rosary devotions and confraternities here, and from October 1927 their choir was heard on radio.
The church closed after the last public Mass on 23 May 2021, when the earthquake-prone buildings could not be strengthened; the site was sold on 27 March 2023 to St Gerard's Limited. Check current access before climbing Mount Victoria, since the buildings are not open as before. The monastery's position above Oriental Bay is protected by council land bought to keep the view clear.
Pope Pius X gave the church an oil painting of Gerard Majella in Ecstasy, painted in Rome by Giovanni Gagliardi for the saint's 1893 beatification; in 1904 it was carried through Rome and hung in St Peter's. It was sent to Wellington in recognition of the church's status as the first dedicated to him.
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