The church is part of the monastic complex built in honor of St. John of God. Its main buildings appeared at the end of the 17th century and have survived to the present day almost unchanged. The monastery is located in a picturesque place in the west of Old Goa, on Monte Santo hill, which means "holy".
The complex, which was erected at a very rapid pace, was built for charitable purposes. In 1685, members of the Hospitaller society (the Brotherhood of St. John the Theologian) arrived in India.
Little is known about the further history of the monastery, and only from isolated accounts of historians. For example, one of them wrote that in the 1840s clergymen and monastery workers lived here, although by that time this religious institution had already been forbidden to hire people for service for ten years.
It is also known that in 1852, during repairs at the monastery, the paintings were restored. At the same time, the roof of the church was dismantled and not restored, as a result of which (according to accounts from 1878) the building looked deserted and abandoned. The architecture of the church is typical of Goa and differs, perhaps, only by having a single entrance instead of three.
