[1] In 1738 Empress Anna granted permission for the church to erect a structure on Nevsky Prospekt, the main street of St. Petersburg.

Auguste de Montferrand married in the church and later had a wake here before his wife took his coffin back to France.

On the eve of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the church membership numbered more than thirty thousand parishioners.

After a show trial prosecuted by Nikolai Krylenko that made headlines worldwide, the rector of St. Catherine's Church, Monsignor Konstanty Budkiewicz, was found guilty of anti-Soviet agitation for organizing nonviolent resistance against the First Soviet anti-religious campaign.

[3] According to Christopher Zugger, "On Easter Sunday, the world was told that the Monsignor was still alive, and Pope Pius XI publicly prayed at St. Peter's that the Soviets would spare his life.

Moscow officials told foreign ministers and reporters that the Monsignor's sentence was just, and that the Soviet Union was a sovereign nation that would accept no interference.

In reply to an appeal from the rabbis of New York City to spare Budkiewicz's life, Pravda wrote a blistering editorial against 'Jewish bankers who rule the world' and bluntly warned that the Soviets would kill Jewish opponents of the Revolution as well.

When the news came to Rome, Pope Pius fell to his knees and wept as he prayed for the priest's soul.

To make matters worse, Cardinal Gasparri had just finished reading a note from the Soviets saying that 'everything was proceeding satisfactorily' when he was handed the telegram announcing the execution.

[2] For 30 years, the building was used only as storage space for the nearby "Museum of History of Religion and of Atheism" located in the former Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan.

In the late 1970s, plans were made to rebuild the church as an organ hall for the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.

According to the church, after being closed by the Soviets in 1938, a 20-year-old woman went into the ransacked temple and retrieved the crucifix out of the sanctuary.