Catholic Church. Pioneer Priests. Labours in Early Days. A Notable Band, Evening Post, Wellington, 24 February 1938, p 20, https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19380224.2.174:

Many notable priests have administered to the spiritual needs of the Catholics of Wellington since the earlydays of the foundation of the Church', and at the present time, when the Roman Catholic Church is celebrating its centenary, thoughts turn back lo the men who carried the torch in the early days.

Who is more entitled to be remembered than the pioneer priest of Wellington, the Rev. Jeremiah Joseph Purcell O'Reily? During the many years he laboured in the small but growing settlement he sacrificed all personal comforts in the interests of his faith and when, on the afternoon of Wednesday, July 21, 1880, he passed peacefully away his death was sincerely mourned by every man, woman, and child in Wellington, no matter what their denomination. Father O'Reily arrived in Wellington in January, 1843, just a little over two years after Bishop Pompallier had paid his first visit to Port Nicholson, then a rising town of some 3500 Europeans. During that visit Bishop Pompallier celebrated the first Holy Mass in the future capital of New Zealand on Christmas Day, 1840.

Father O'Reily was born in Ireland in 1799. He was educated for the priesthood in Rome, joining the Franciscan Order of Friars. After his ordination at the age of twenty-five, he was appointed to the missions in Cork under Dr. Delaney. He was afterwards stationed in Kilkenny, of which mission Dr. Kinsella was Bishop. After these years of initial ministry in his native land, by leave and with the approval of his religious superiors, he elected to come to New Zealand as chaplain to Lord Petre. In the first year of his arrival he established the first Catholic Church in the settlement and ministered in the building erected by his exertions on the site of what is now St. Mary of the Angels in Boulcott Street. In 1846 Father O'Reily built the first Catholic presbytery, on a site adjoining the present Catholic cemetery in Mount Street. His next activity was the erection of a school, which he established in 1847 in Boulcott Street, on the site of the present St. Mary's Presbytery. This school continued to function until the arrival, in 1876, of the Marist Brothers

Wide Field of Service
From 1843 to 1850 Father O'Reily was the only resident priest in Wellington. During those years, in addition to attending the needs of the pioneer Catholics in Wellington, he attended the Catholics in the Hutt Valley and across the Cook Strait to Port Underwood and Nelson. He was able to bestow a welcome upon Monsignor Philip Joseph Viard, S.M., appointed administrator of the Wellington Vicariate, when the latter arrived from Auckland, together with a number of helpers, on May 1, 1850. In 1868 Father O'Reily paid a visit to Europe, spending about six months in Rome, where he was appointed chaplain to the Papal Zouaves. Returning to the colony in 1870 in the company of Dr. Viard, S.M., then the first Bishop of Wellington, who had visited Rome on his visit ad limina apostolorum and had continued his stay until the time of the General Council of 1869, Father O'Reily devoted himself with untiring activity to his work for souls until 1879, when, owing to his great age and growing infirmity, he was compelled to retire. A few years prior to that time he had relinquished his parochial charge and succeeding him as parish priest of Te Aro, then, was the Rev. Father M. Kearney, S.M. Before his actual retirement, however, he had replaced his earlier church by a pretty Gothic church in wood. This was in 1874. The new church he dedicated to St. Mary of the Angels, after the title of the favourite Basilica, in Assisi, of his Order's saintly founder, St. Francis. (This building, Father O'Reily's second church, became very dear to the people, and its destruction by fire on May 28, 1918, brought real grief to all.