"Former Cathedral of the Assumption" Top 5 Page for this destination George Town Things to Do Tip by andrewyong

I have jut found out that the firtst Church of the Assumption was situated in Church Street, not far away from the current site in Farquhar Street. It was indeed first built right after the founding of the settlement of Penang by Light. It was a wooden church, built in 1786, but, like I have said elsewhere, things in the tropics are difficult to preserve. So a bigger church was built with bricks (at the current site), and plastered over (like many old buildings here. Built in the French Notre-Dame style, (I distincttively remembered a plaque inside the church stated that) it was made a cathedral in 1850 until the late Pope John Paul II acceded to the request of the diocese to elevate my parish to cathedral status (Holy Spirit Cathedral) and committed this church as one of the common churches according to common law.

It is indeed true that the Church of the Assumption was made the cathedral church of the suffragan See of Penang in 1955 (when the Kuala Lumpur Archdiocese was also established). FYI, the Archdiocese of Melaka-Singapore subsisted until in the 1970s when Rome re-established the ancient Diocese of Melaka (dissolved after the defeat of the Portugese by the Dutch I suppose, which is another story, and now suffragan to the KL Archdiocese) and Singapore became an Apostolic Administration directly governed by Rome/Vatican, it seems. (Singapore is now a Metropolitan Archdiocese in her own right).

The Church of the Assumption has some sort of semi-abstract stained glass windows behind the main altar and a bronze free standing sculpture depicting the baptism of Christ by St John the Baptist inside. The archway to the confessionaries reads something like "Come and be forgiven, Go and sin no more"

The church now forms part of a single City Parish with four churches (Assumption-in Farqugar Street, Our Lady of Sorrows-in Macalister Road near KOMTAR tower, St John Britto-in farther away Sungai Pinang Road and St Francis Xavier-in nearby end of Penang Road).

Address: Farquhar Street
Directions: next to St George's Anglican Church and the Penang Museum