<P> On 18 February 1900, Cardinal Moran opened and blessed the new church to great fanfare before an assembly of 1,400 . Local Catholic newspaper The Advocate remarked that "The congregation has literally emerged from the worst ecclesiastical building in the colony to enter one of the finest ." </P> <P> The church was finally completed in 1925 . On 12 February, Archbishop Cattaneo, the Apostolic Delegate, dedicated the new marble high altar and consecrated the completed church . </P> <P> In its embryonic years, St Mary's was an overwhelming Irish Australian parish . In the years of the Gold Rush, however, a significant number of Chinese Australians also worshipped there . </P> <P> The graves of many of St Mary's early parishioners still lie beneath the Queen Victoria Market a few hundred metres eastward . </P>

St mary star of the sea catholic church west melbourne vic