It was built in 1861 at the initiative of the Catholic priest
Peter Kharischirashvili, who wished to provide a
rite for Catholics in the Georgian language, Along with the parish church, Kharischirashvili founded two monasteries: one for men and one for women. The monasteries and the church used the Georgian Byzantine rite from the beginning, but it wasn't approved by the pope until 1875. In the 1950s, up to 10,000
ethnic Georgians of the Catholic faith lived in Istanbul. After the
Istanbul pogrom in 1955 under
Adnan Menderes, many Georgians and other Christians emigrated from Turkey. Today the Georgian-Catholic community numbers only 200 to 250 people. As the number of Georgian Catholic Christians in Istanbul has declined, a large part of the church community today consists of
ethnic Armenians and ethnic Turkish converts to the Catholic Faith. ==See also==