In 1832, the Vicar Apostolic to Scotland's Northern Region, James Kyle, sent the Edinburgh-born Father Walter Lovi to minister to the migrant community.

Lovi initially faced considerable hostility from the local population due to sectarian prejudice, and struggled to rent a space to hold Mass.

However, his personal ministry to the sick during a cholera outbreak that year - and his role in persuading most of the Catholic labourers to remain in Wick throughout, saving the town from an economic disaster - won him a great deal of goodwill, and he was given vacant land on which to build a church.

In 1861, the church was consecrated to St Joachim, father of the Virgin Mary, by Stephan de Djun Kooskoy, Synod Prefect of the Arctic Regions, due in part to his personal dedication to the saint and in part to St Joachim's feast day falling during the herring season.

The construction of the nuclear installations at Dounreay in 1955 led to another large wave of immigration to both Wick and the nearby town of Thurso.