Patrick Comerford
Among the many churches and places of worship I visited recently in Singapore, Saint Joseph’s Church is unique as a Roman Catholic church without a parish, because of its Portuguese liturgical and ritual traditions, and because it was once part of the Diocese of Macau for many years, standing apart from the Diocese of Singapore.
Saint Joseph’s Church is on Victoria Street in the Rochor area and the Central Area of Singapore’s central business district. Saint Joseph’s and its predecessor, the Church of São José, were built on the same site and both were linked with the Portuguese Mission.
The church is still known for its Portuguese-inspired traditions, such as its Holy Week and Good Friday commemorations each year. But today it is a rectoral church of devotion and not a parish church, and so it has no have specific ecclesiastical or parochial boundaries.
The present church was designed in the Neo-Manueline Portuguese late-Gothic style by the Singapore architectural practice of Swan and Maclaren. The foundation stone was laid in 1904 and it was built in 1906-1912. But the history of Catholicism in the region is traced back to Saint Francis Xavier, who was sent by Saint Ignatius Loyola and the King of Portugal to the Far East and who is said to have spent several days in Singapore on his way to Japan in 1552.
Father Jacob Joaquim Freire Brumber, assistant to the Vicar of Saint Peter’s Church in Malacca, visited the Catholics of Singapore in 1821, when Singapore was part of the District of Malacca and within the Diocese of Goa. Dr Azevedo allowed Mass to be celebrated in his house.
Father Francisco da Silva Pinto e Maia from Porto of the Congregation of Mission, arrived in Singapore from Macau in 1825 to look after the 12 or 13 Catholics in Singapore. He founded the Portuguese Mission in Singapore, and began to plan the first church.
There were 200 Catholics in Singapore by 1829, under the care of Father Francisco. As he had no church or chapel, he said Mass in the home of his friend, Dr José d’Almeida, at Beach Road, where Raffles Hotel now stands.
Dr José d’Almeida was a surgeon in the Portuguese Navy who had settled in Singapore on 25 December 1825. He started the firm of José d’Almeida & Sons, which began as shipping agents for Portuguese and Spanish cargo, and later became one of the biggest and most important in Singapore.
The head of the Portuguese Mission, Father Francisco da Silva Pinto e Maia, initiated plans to build the first chapel, a 60 ft by 30 ft building on Bras Basah Road, the former site of Saint Joseph’s Institution and now the Singapore Art Museum.
When the foundation stone was laid on 9 December 1832, there were about 300 Catholics in Singapore. The church was completed on 5 May 1833 and was blessed and opened on 9 June 1833.
The foundation stone for a new church to serve the Portuguese and Eurasian Catholics in Singapore and called São José (Saint Joseph) was laid by his successor, Father Vicente de Santa Catarina, on 14 December 1851. The new church was blessed and opened in 1853.
The new church was built on 12 lots of land between Victoria Street and Queen Street. Six of the lots had been given to Father Francisco by Sir Samuel George Bonham, then Governor of the Straits Settlement, and six were bought by Father Francisco in 1833.
The church grounds included Saint Anthony’s Boys’ and Girls’ School, first opened by Father José Pedro Santa Ana da Cunha in 1879 as Saint Anna’s School in a small house on Middle Road. The school changed its name when it moved into the church compound in 1886.
Pope Leo XIII and King Louis I of Portugal signed a concordat on 23 June 1886, transferring the Portuguese Missions in Singapore and Malacca from the Portuguese Archdiocese of Goa to the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Macau.
With a steady growth in the congregation, a new church was planned from 1891 by the Vicar General of the Portuguese Mission, Father José Joaquim Baptista. Bishop João Paulino de Azevedo e Castro of Macau laid the foundation stone in 1904, the earlier Church of São José was pulled down in 1906, and a new church was built on the same site.
The new and larger church, the present Saint Joseph’s Church, took little more than five years to build, and was opened by the Bishop of Macau on 30 June 1912.
Saint Joseph’s was designed by the noted architectural practice of Swan and MacLaren in the Neo-Manueline Portuguese late-Gothic style and to hold 1,500 people The church was laid out in the shape of a Latin cross, measuring 66.25 metres in length, with a transept of 45 metres and a nave that is 18.75 metres wide. It is built on a north-west/south-east axis, rather than the traditional east/west liturgical axis.
The liturgical west front has three towers: a central octagonal tower capped by a dome flanked by two smaller towers. The portico is supported by four columns and has large marble statues of Saint Joseph, Saint John of God and Saint John de Brito.
Inside, the church is a single large space with a wooden barrel-vault roof instead of a gothic-style ceiling. Neither the nave nor the transepts have aisles. It is painted in beige, with grey details, like the exterior.
The main altar is dedicated to Saint Joseph and the side altars are dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Fatima, the Sacred Heart and Saint Anthony of Padua, with saints also depicted in statues in niches throughout the church and in the stained glass windows.
The church once had a pipe organ, built in 1888 by Forster and Andrews. But that has since been dismantled, and the church now has two Allen digital pipe organs – a three-manual in the nave and a four-manual in the organ gallery which is Singapore’s largest digital pipe organ.
From 1947 to 1990, the church published Rally, a monthly English-language magazine that became the official magazine of the Portuguese Mission in Malacca and Singapore.
A significant segment of the Eurasian community in Singapore in the early days were baptised and married in the church. It was known as the ‘Eurasian Church’ and successive generations of families such as the de Costas, the d’Cottas, the de Souzas, the de Mellos, the Deskers, the Fernandezes, the Gomeses, the Josephs, the Pereiras, the Pintos, the Tessensohns and many others were among its parishioners.
Archbishop Gregory Yong of Singapore and Bishop Arquiminio Rodrigues da Costa of Macau signed an agreement in 1977 ending the dual ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Singapore and transferring Saint Joseph’s to the Archdiocese of Singapore in 1981.
With this agreement Saint Joseph’s ceased being a parish church and became a church of devotion, and the whole island came within the Archdiocese of Singapore.
To maintain the Portuguese character of the church, the Bishop of Macau continued to appoint priests to the church until the end 1999. When Father Benito de Sousa’s term of office came to an end, the Bishop of Macau stopped sending missionaries to the church, ending the link with the Portuguese Mission that had lasted 175 years.
Saint Joseph’s Church was designated a National Monument in 2005, recognising its rich history and its social and cultural importance, especially within the Eurasian community in Singapore.
When the church was being repainted in 2007, painters uncovered the original ornamental plasterwork from the 1900s underneath the paint.
Saint Joseph’s celebrated its centenary on 30 June 2012. The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, celebrated Mass in Saint Joseph’s in 2015 to mark the Golden Jubilee of the modern Singapore.
The church began a long period of restoration in 2017. The difficulties encountered included architectural complications, National Heritage requirements, and financial difficulties aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic. After five years of restoration work, Saint Joseph’s Church reopened on 30 June 2022, the 110th anniversary of its consecration.
Saint Joseph’s continues to practice many Portuguese-inspired traditions, including the patterns of the Holy Week and Good Friday commemoration, and traditional Portuguese devotions to Our Lady of Fatima, Saint Joseph, Saint Jude, the Sacred Heart and Saint Anthony of Padua. The floor has decorative Portuguese terracotta tiles and an outdoor shrine to Our Lady of Fatima has azulejos or Portuguese decorative tiles depicting the apparitions at Fatima.
The Rector of Saint Joseph’s is Father Joe Lopez, and the Vice Rector is Father Damien Lim. A traditional Latin Mass is also celebrated on Sundays.
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