Sacred Heart was opened by the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions in 1881, although the Sisters had schools on the site from 1868. Xavier College was founded in 1946 and was operated by the Marist Brothers who had schools on the site from 1888. The college is located in central Christchurch, adjacent to the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament on the former sites of its predecessor colleges, which were adjoining. The convent building was occupied by the Christchurch Music Centre until it was demolished following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. The college does not have an enrolment scheme and can therefore accept pupils from all parts of Christchurch. The maximum roll is set at 880 students by agreement between the school's proprietor, the Catholic Bishop of Christchurch and the Government of New Zealand under the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act 1975. A standard provision of that Act is that 5% of students may be "non-preference". The College is also the only one of the five Catholic secondary schools situated in Christchurch, to be co-educational.
Earthquake problems
Because of the 2010 Canterbury earthquake which devastated much of the city, the college accommodated the entire primary school community of St Paul's School, Dallington for several months. But the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake caused far worse devastation to the city than the September 2010 earthquake. Parts of the college were under the unstable 400-ton dome of the Catholic Cathedral. Because the dome was in imminent danger of collapse, the college left the site and operated in the afternoons at St Thomas of Canterbury College. St Paul's School moved to a site which the Minister of Education made available. The dome was removed on 26 July and the school moved back to its own site on 1 August 2011. However three buildings remained off limits. Because of the effects of the earthquakes, Marian College, Christchurch was relocated to Catholic Cathedral College at the beginning of the 2012 school year for a period expected to be between two and four years.
Organisations
CCC Young Vinnies is a youth organisation part of Catholic Cathedral College, involving Year 7–13 students. In 2012 they donated 2012 cans of food for St Vincent de Paul Society. The motto that the group lives by is "Social Justice learning, Social Justice living".
Houses
The names and colours of the Catholic Cathedral College houses are:
