Basilica and Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Help

Perched on Mission Hill in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood, this Roman Catholic shrine is run by the Redemptorist Fathers and is popularly known as Mission Church. Construction began in 1878 in the Romanesque Revival style, producing a twin-towered brick facade that remains a prominent landmark above the surrounding Victorian streetscape. The church was built to serve Boston's growing Irish and Polish immigrant communities and houses a venerated copy of the icon Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Its Wednesday novena has drawn thousands of worshippers each week for decades, making it one of the most actively attended pilgrimage sites in New England — a devotional tradition unusual in scale for an urban parish church. The building is wheelchair accessible.