A historic downtown church will be undergoing renovations thanks to money from Quebec’s culture ministry.

Christ Church Cathedral, which has stood on Ste-Catherine St. for more than 150 years, is in urgent need of repair, according to church officials, especially to an aluminum steeple that replaced the original stone one in the 1920s.

“The steeple, unfortunately, is corroding from the inside and that’s the really urgent part of what we need to do,” said interim priest-in-charge Donald Boisvert.

To that end, the Quebec government is pitching in $1 million for repairs to that steeple but that’s not where the church’s problems end. Some of the masonry and stone work outside the building is in need of repair and the roof has sprung several leaks. Boisvert said the pews are still the same ones installed in the 1850s and need to be refurbished, as does the flooring.

Boisvert said those fixes will be addressed through donations.

“We’ll undertake a fundraising to sort of raise money for the rest of the work that has to be done at the cathedral,” he said.

The Christ Church is the cathedral of the Anglican diocese of Montreal, “sort of a spiritual oasis in the heart of the city,” said the priest.

“It’s a Montreal landmark in many ways and it’s right smack in the heart of the city,” he said. “When it was first built, it was actually outside the sort of mainstream of the city, it was sort of in the country as it were. But the city grew up around it which is really quite wonderful.”