and Botanical Gardens. Present-day cathedral A new site for the cathedral was selected above Caine Road by the Glenealy Ravine and the cornerstone of the new church was laid on 8 December 1883. Crawley and Company of London were hired to be the architects and five years later, construction was completed. The church opened on 7 December 1888, the vigil of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and was blessed one day later. The construction of the cathedral cost US$15,400, and since a Catholic church can only be consecrated once it has become free from debt, the cathedral did not have its rite of consecration held until 8 December 1938, exactly fifty years after it first opened. The ceremony was officiated by the vicar apostolic of Hong Kong Enrico Valtorta, the bishop of Macau José da Costa Nunes and the bishop emeritus of Canton; three of the cathedral's altars were also consecrated. 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. However, it survived the war relatively unscathed due to a decree made a century before. When the mission in Hong Kong was first established in 1841, Pope Pius IX ruled that, although the colony was under British rule, the Prefecture Apostolic should remain under the administration of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), a missionary society from Italy. As a result, the Japanese treated the cathedral as being under the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Italy, with whom they were not at war. Because of this, the cathedral was spared from being ransacked and plundered by the occupying forces and its archives were preserved better than other churches throughout Hong Kong, having been left "relatively unscathed." After the conclusion of the war, the cathedral underwent a series of renovations. The roof – which was previously made of timber – was replaced with a concrete one in 1952 due to damage from termites. The reordering of the sanctuary took place in 1969 after the Second Vatican Council, in which the main altar was moved to the cathedral's crossing. In 1988, air conditioning was installed and the roof underwent reparation. Significant leaks in the roof were reported in 1997 and a massive restoration project took place. This entailed fixing the roof, repainting the walls and the niche housing the statue of