Think City, Diocese work to conserve Pagar Tras church ruins

The ruins of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church at Pagar Tras, nicknamed the “Notre Dame in the Jungle” for its resemblance to the Paris cathedral, remain the focus of an ongoing heritage conservation effort involving Think City, the Diocese of Penang, and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM).

The 1882 church, built by French missionary Francois Terrien for the area’s Hakka Catholic community, has stood in ruins since it was abandoned in 1948 during the Communist insurgency.

USM, Think City, and the Diocese of Penang have jointly run a workshop series on the site’s history and heritage, most recently in 2025, forming the backbone of the ongoing conservation push.

State funding announced for ruins preservation in 2023

In January 2023, then-Penang State Tourism and Creative Economy Committee chairman Yeoh Soon Hin announced a RM1 million ruins preservation project at a press conference held at the site.

The role has since changed hands; Wong Hon Wai has headed the tourism and creative economy portfolio since August 2023.

The 2023 announcement outlined a three-phase preservation plan, with the first phase expected to begin within three months of the announcement.

Yeoh had said the site was expected to welcome tourists and locals by the end of the project’s first year, positioning it as a new heritage attraction for mainland Penang.

Diocese-led effort traces back to 2021

The Diocese of Penang first began work to preserve Pagar Tras in 2021, partnering with the Penang State Exco for Tourism and Creative Economy (PETACE) on an initiative called “100 Year Trail – Pagar Tras.”

That project aimed to conserve the church ruins and transform the site into a tourist attraction, with a particular focus on drawing visitors to mainland Penang.

A wooden signboard bearing the Chinese characters for “Faith, Hope and Love,” salvaged from the original church, remains a treasured artefact from that era for the Hakka Catholic community.

Cardinal Sebastian Francis, Archbishop of Penang, has said the ongoing workshops are a way of honouring the memory, history, and heritage of Pagar Tras more than a century after the church was first built.

A Hakka Catholic community’s century-old legacy

The church was built for Hakka farmers who settled in the Sungai Lembu area, many of whom had converted to Catholicism under the guidance of French missionaries from the Paris Foreign Missions Society.

Its Gothic-style design, featuring twin belfries and a rose window, was deliberately modelled on Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, giving rise to its enduring nickname.

Adjacent to the ruins lies a cemetery holding around a hundred graves, including that of a parish priest buried there according to his final wishes.

When the church was abandoned in 1948, its most valuable items, including a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and its stained-glass windows, were relocated to a new church built in Kulim in 1957.

The Pagar Tras site sits roughly ten minutes from the Minor Basilica of St Anne in Bukit Mertajam, giving any future heritage trail a natural link to an existing pilgrimage destination.