St. Thomas More was founded on January 1, 2008, upon the merging of two Catholic parishes on Summit Avenue: St. Luke (1888) and Immaculate Heart of Mary (1949). Designed by John Theodore Comès, a native of St. Paul, the architectural style is Romanesque and the church features a basilica floor plan, barrel vault ceilings, an apse, and chapels around the apse and throughout the nave. The lower church was completed in August 1919, and the upper church was completed in 1926. The parish has been entrusted to the care of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) since the 1990s. In 2018, St. Thomas More launched a capital campaign that transformed the church undercroft into St. Ignatius Social Hall, added a church gathering space and new bathrooms, made the entire campus fully accessible, and replaced exterior windows in the school building. In 2023, a separate non-profit—the Ignatian Spirituality Center at St. Thomas More—was launched to bring the wisdom and beauty of Ignatian spirituality to a wider, more diverse group of pilgrims in the greater community.
