St John the Baptist Catholic Church

This guide to St John the Baptist Catholic Church in Auckland opens in December 1860, when a ship carried Bishop Jean Baptiste Pompallier's unlikely cargo of Italian friars, seminarians and French nuns into the harbour. It follows Pompallier's years of begging for money and recruits in Europe, the stone church raised on Parnell Road in 1861, and the Irish congregation's first Sunday with unfamiliar Italian accents in the confessional. Listen for the bell that has rung here since.