St. Paul Church is a parish of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and is located in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. In its unique mission, St. Paul's serves as:
St. Paul Parish was one of many parishes in the area founded by Fr. Manasses Dougherty largely in response to the influx of Irish Catholics to the Boston area in the late 19th century. The original St. Paul Church building, a former meeting house of the Shepherd Congregational Society on the site of what is now Harvard University's Holyoke Center, was purchased by Fr. Dougherty in 1873. The cornerstone for the present church building, an Italian Romanesque monument located at Quincy Square (corner of Bow and Arrow Streets), was laid in November 1916 under the leadership of then pastor Rev. John J. Ryan.
The architect was Edward T. P. Graham, a St. Paul parishioner, graduate of Harvard University, and winner of the first Traveling Fellowship to Rome and the École des Beaux-Arts. Graham used Verona's Basilica of San Zeno Maggiore and Torre del Commune as inspirations. The new church building, which was dedicated in October 1924, was at the same site as the St. Paul School, which had been built some years before. By the mid-1960s, enrollment had declined and the parish school was replaced by the Choir School. In the 1991, under the direction of then-pastor the Reverend John P. Boles (now Auxiliary Bishop of Boston, Emeritus), the original school building was torn down and replaced with a multi-purpose building attached to the church, which houses the rectory, parish offices, the Choir School and the Harvard Catholic Center. The present Pastor of St. Paul's and Senior Catholic Chaplain to Harvard is the Reverend Michael E. Drea, who has served as pastor since 1 June 2009.