Our Lady of Perpetual Help

Belgian Redemptorist priests built this parish church in 1932, bringing with them a devotion two centuries in the making. The Redemptorists, missionaries founded to preach to neglected country people near Naples, were appointed by Pope Pius IX in 1866 as official custodians of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help icon in Rome. For years, this pink outpost operated as a mission church before gaining full parish status of its own.

Locals simply call it the pink church, and the description does the job better than the official name ever could. It sits at a road junction on the route south to Falmouth and English Harbour, seen by most who tour the island and visited by comparatively few. Under the Diocese of St. John’s–Basseterre, it now oversees mission churches of its own in Sea View Farm and Willikies, having gone from outpost to anchor. The choir, by all local accounts, remains the main draw on a Sunday.