St Joseph's Church, Mt Victoria, Catholic church in Mt Victoria, New Zealand

St Joseph's Church is a Catholic church on the eastern side of the Basin Reserve in Mt Victoria, Wellington. Designed by Studio Pacific Architecture and opened in 2004, it is built of concrete and timber, with a circular-triangular liturgical space seating 300 around an altar set in a flattened apse. A separate Blessed Sacrament chapel for about 30 people is topped by a tower with Shane Cotton's ascending stained glass window, visible from Cambridge and Kent Terraces.

The Catholic presence in Mt Victoria began in 1885 with an octagonal wooden church on Buckle Street, next to St Patrick's College. In 1898 land at Tory and Buckle Streets was set aside for a cathedral that was never built, and the wooden church was demolished in 1945. The parish then moved to a renovated hall in Paterson Street, replaced by the present church in 2004.

The name honours Saint Joseph, and the parish's older devotional objects were carried into the new building: the heart-kauri cross behind the altar, blessed with mission indulgences in 1894, and a full-size Sacred Heart statue donated by a convert in thanksgiving for the faith. The Shane Cotton window, given by Anthony and Nanette Bahaut, shows fish, taniwha, a fantail, an open bible, a pot, the fleur-de-lys of France and alpha and omega.

The church stands on the eastern side of the Basin Reserve, on Paterson Street, part of State Highway 1 running toward the Mount Victoria Tunnel. The liturgical space seats 300 in a circular-triangular, semi-amphitheatre layout with the altar at the flattened apse, and a separate Blessed Sacrament chapel seats about 30. The Shane Cotton tower window is visible from Cambridge and Kent Terraces and from the Basin Reserve.

The Art Deco stained glass by Harry Clarke of Dublin came to New Zealand for the 1939/1940 Centennial Exhibition at Lyall Bay, then entered the church; the glass crucifix, a glass Our Lady on the Plinth and a rose window of the Virgin are kept, the rose serving as her shrine. Five other windows from the same series went to Sacred Heart Cathedral in 1984.