The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 set events in motion. As violence spread across northern China, the British positioned Indian battalions in Kowloon as a precautionary measure, and roughly 200 Catholic soldiers among them needed a place to worship. The civil Catholic population was also growing. Together, these pressures made the case for a permanent church in Tsim Sha Tsui unmistakable. When Dr. Gomes committed his $20,000 in 1903, the project became financially viable. Fr. De Maria, then Pro-Vicar Apostolic of Hong Kong, laid the foundation stone on 10 December 1904. The firm of Palmer and Turner — architects who would leave their mark across colonial Hong Kong and Southeast Asia — designed the building. Construction finished in 1905. On 23 May of that year, the completed church was consecrated to Our Lady of Pompeii, exactly as the benefactor had specified.

Palmer and Turner gave the Rosary Church a Gothic exterior fitted to its tropical setting. The original plan drew on the Roman Basilican model, a longitudinal nave with side aisles leading to an apse — one of the most durable forms in Western ecclesiastical architecture, adapted here for the subtropics. The soaring ceiling, visible in photographs of the interior, creates the vertical drama characteristic of Gothic design: the eye is drawn upward, away from the heat and noise of Chatham Road outside. The church forms part of a building cluster with St. Mary's Canossian College and St. Mary's Canossian School next door, creating a Catholic institutional enclave in Tsim Sha Tsui that has persisted for more than a century. The street, the institutions, the architectural language — all unchanged in their essentials.

When Japanese forces occupied Hong Kong in December 1941, the fate of religious institutions across the city was uncertain. Many were commandeered, damaged, or forced to close. The Rosary Church was different: the Japanese army left it untouched, and services continued throughout the occupation. At the time, the parish was led by Horace De Angelis, an Italian priest — Italy and Japan were wartime allies, which likely shielded the church from the disruptions that affected British-affiliated institutions. Whatever the reason, the congregation maintained its rhythm of worship through years when little else in Hong Kong was normal. The building and its community came through the war intact.

The Hong Kong government classified the Rosary Church as a Grade II Historic Building in 1990, acknowledging its architectural and historical significance. In 2010, the classification was upgraded to Grade I — the highest level available for buildings not declared monuments — recognizing the church's importance to Kowloon's Catholic heritage and its survival as one of the oldest examples of Gothic ecclesiastical architecture in the territory. The grade reflects both what the building is and what it has endured: more than 120 years of services, an occupation, decades of rapid urban transformation around it, and the slow accumulation of a community that continues to gather beneath those vaulted ceilings. Dr. Gomes's donation, made in memory of the people he loved, turned out to be one of the most durable investments in Kowloon's history.