The church was built in the years 1936-38 according to plans by the architects A. Swinkels from Maastricht and E. Schoenmaekers from Sittard. Contractor Scheurs from Elsloo carried out the work for 73,386 guilders (excluding land purchase and inventory). The construction chaplain was the very creative Jos Janssen, who had previously been the chaplain of the Saint Martin's Church in Wyck. On March 12, 1936, the new parish of Scharn, separated from Lord, was established, which initially used an emergency church.

On September 20, 1936, the foundation stone was laid by Dean Schoenmaeckers van Wyck. In July 1937 the church was ready for use (the tower was not finished until a year later) and on September 6 the consecration took place by Mgr. Lemmens, bishop of Roermond. Pastor Janssen realized that because of the Great Depression of the 1930s, there would be little money for the decoration of the new church. Yet he managed to collect furniture and art treasures for his church in creative ways.

It is interesting how Janssen managed to obtain marble for the decoration of the church of Scharn. Even before the tender for the church, Janssen had written a letter to Pope Pius XI, in which he requested a relic of the patron saint About St. Anthony of Padua and a batch of marble for the church. He got the former, but not the latter, after which Janssen turned to the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He hoped Mussolini would succumb to the argument that the church was dedicated to an Italian saint. Mussolini indeed promised at the end of 1937 a shipment of precious marble worth 40,000 guilders, 14,000 kilos of green cipollino apuana marble, that Janssen himself was allowed to select in Carrara and that it would arrive in Maastricht by ship from Livorno via Amsterdam in the summer of 1939. As a thank you, an Italian flag flew on the church for a while. Janssen decorated the church as an Italian folk church with a multitude of paintings, sculptures, chandeliers and altars. Above the choir even hung a huge rosary with lights. Under his successor Father Systermans most of it was removed from 1958. [2] [3] In 1966 a number of objects in the church were registered in the national monument register.

Taken from the Wikipedia page