The church stands close to the southern end of the Woodstock Road and is the principal Catholic church of Oxford. The mission was founded in 1785 and the present building dates from 1875. The parish is served by priests of the Society of Jesus.
In its early days St Aloysius was so successful in attracting converts that it was attacked by a cartoon, depicting Jesuits fishing for mortar-boarded and coronetted souls in a pond. The caption read: ‘Members of the Romish Church are requested not to trespass in Protestant waters and on no account to tamper with the Gold Fish’. Particular scandal was caused by the conversion of the Marquis of Bute, who had been an undergraduate at Christ Church and was later a generous benefactor to St Aloysius. The Jesuits left St Aloysius in the 1980s, though not before destroying its impressive collection of relics, historical vestments and so on. Since 1990 it has been served by a new community of Oratorians, founded from the Birmingham Oratory. See their site.
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