The building was constructed as an elaborate parish church between 1912 and 1923 in a primitive neo-Gothic style, on a Latin cross groundplan with transept and triple nave, and a belltower on the west front.

Plans for an impressive church were accepted in the 1860s, drawn up by Pierre Bossan, architect to the Archdiocese of Lyon, where his most significant work was the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière.

After many years in storage they were destroyed in a fire, and had to be reconstructed by Adrien Rey [fr], from preliminary drawings by Bossan's partner, Giniez, which had been kept by his children.

By that time inflation had reduced the value of the endowment and there was a shortage of labour, and the church that was eventually built, which was finished on 20 November 1923 but not consecrated until 23 May 1933 by Cardinal Maurin, Archbishop of Lyons, was significantly less than what had been planned: it is missing three of the intended four belltowers and a dome, as well as quantities of external and internal decorations.

In 2005, at the instigation of the Abbé Martin, rector, the layout was completed by the creation of an episcopal cathedral coherent with the altar and the ambo, on drawings by the architect Michel Goyet.