St. Mary's Parish

St. Mary’s stands at the corner of Park Street North and Sheaffe Street, in the city’s core. Its history goes back to a small frame and roughcast church completed nearby in 1838 under Father William MacDonald. On 24 May 1856 the first bishop of the new Diocese of Hamilton, John Farrell, made St. Mary’s his cathedral, and when that wooden church burned in August 1859 he laid the cornerstone of the present brick and stone church in 1860. The City’s heritage inventory credits the Gothic Revival design to Frederick Kortum and the interior to Zepherin Perrault, and describes a massive bell tower holding three bells cast at Troy, New York, in 1885, Bavarian stained glass installed between 1860 and 1899, and a carved high altar of 1860.

St. Mary’s remained the bishops’ cathedral until 1927, and after the Cathedral of Christ the King opened in 1933 it became known as St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral. The heritage inventory notes that it has served successive waves of Catholic immigrants, from the Irish of the 1840s to the Italians, Vietnamese and Portuguese of the twentieth century, and the parish says the Government of Ontario recognizes it as an Ontario History and Heritage Site. Father Luís Inácio became its pastor in June 2026.

The Saturday 5:00 p.m. Mass is in Portuguese and English. On Sunday, Mass is at 9:30 a.m. in English and at 11:00 a.m. in Portuguese, though the parish’s home page gives 11:30 for the Portuguese Mass. Weekday Masses are held in the chapel: in Portuguese on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. and Wednesday at 9:00 a.m., and in English on Thursday and Friday at 9:00 a.m.

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