St Gerard’s Church - Mt Victoria Historical Society

It was Cyril Wright, an art logistics expert, who took on the challenging task of removing the 3 x 4 metre painting of St Gerard from the church in April 1992.

The Monastery and church had recently been sold by the Redemptorist Order and the Order gave the painting, St Gerard in Ecstasy, which had hung above the altar for more than 80 years, to the village of Mater Domini, south of Naples in Italy. The village had become a St Gerard pilgrimage site for Italians.

Brother Gerard Majella was an Italian Redemptorist lay brother who lived during the mid-1700s. He was known as the Wonder Worker and patron of mothers because of the many blessings mothers and children received through his prayers. Painted by Gagliardi in 1883, the life-sized artwork depicting him giving food to the poor was painted for his beatification and canonisation. He was made a saint in 1904, the year before the Redemptorists came to Wellington. When their church was completed in 1908, it was the first church in the world to be dedicated to St Gerard and Pope Pius X ordered the painting be sent here.

Photo from Evening Post article, 24.4.1992

Painting in crate. [Cyril Wright]

Cyril Wright first took the painting off the wall above the altar. It was then covered in plastic, put in a pre-built crate, covered and moved into the carpark. To get the painting out, he had to remove windows and doors from the church. He accompanied the painting all the way to its new home. The crate was trucked from the Monastery carpark to Auckland, from where it was flown to Berlin in a cargo plane (after some very close measuring of the cargo door). From Berlin, it was trucked to Rome and then to St Gerard’s Monastery in Mater Domini.

The crate outside before the top goes on. [Cyril Wright]