[1] After the First Opium War, Hong Kong was ceded to the British in the Treaty of Nanking and the colony soon became a popular stopover for missionaries travelling onwards to China.

[2] The parish was established in 1842 by Theodore Joset, the first Prefect Apostolic of Hong Kong, and work began on a new and permanent church soon afterwards.

[6] Within the next few years, the number of Catholics in the parish grew significantly, partly due to the emigration of people from neighbouring Macau.

However, the Victoria Harbour waterfront district where the church was situated became more overcrowded with the rapid growth of Hong Kong at the time, and it became apparent that a permanent and larger cathedral was necessary.

As a result, plans were made for a new church on a more elevated ground in Mid-Levels, located close to the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens.

[7] During the Second World War, the cathedral suffered damage on its anniversary in 1941, when a Japanese shell was dropped onto it during the Battle of Hong Kong.

[4] Because of this, the cathedral was spared from being ransacked and plundered by the occupying forces[11] and its archives were preserved better than other churches throughout Hong Kong,[4] having been left "relatively unscathed.

This entailed fixing the roof, repainting the walls and the niche housing the statue of the Immaculate Conception, replacing tiles, enhancing the lighting and sound system and installing new stained glass windows in the Chapel of Our Lord's Passion, which was rededicated to the Chinese Martyrs.

It now houses the Blessed Sacrament – serving as the cathedral's main tabernacle after the removal of the high altar in 1969 – and is reserved for Eucharistic adoration.

The chapel was chosen out of the four to commemorate the then-newly canonised saints because it was the most thematically similar, in that the martyrs gave up their lives for the faith, emulating Jesus' sacrifice to save mankind.

This consists of two vicar apostolics, Timoleon Raimondi and Dominic Pozzoni, and five of the six deceased bishops – Enrico Valtorta, Lorenzo Bianchi, Francis Hsu, Peter Lei, and John Baptist Wu.

The bishop at the time, Joseph Cardinal Zen, felt that the crypt would be a "symbolic move to inherit the teachings of previous generations in order to inspire future ones.

[7] In November 2011, a lock of John Paul II's hair was brought to the cathedral after the Holy See granted the Diocese of Hong Kong a relic from the late pontiff.