The church started in September 1987 in an Anglican Church Building on Burwood Rd, Belfield. Father Samuel Guirguis prayed weekly masses on Saturday mornings and Sunday school classes started that same day with 1 servant and 7 children ranging in age from 14 to 3 years of age. The church had been called the Inner West Coptic Orthodox church until a fund raising cruise in late 1989 saw a democratic vote take place to come up with the name St. Mary and St. Philopateer Merkorious.

An attempt was made to buy the building that was being used, but the church was out-bid by the Koreans. We bid $400,000 - They bid $600,000.

The growing community meant a larger building was needed as soon as possible. The service was not interrupted but instead moved to a Uniting church in Concord West and remained there from January '88 until June ’88. During that time the Uniting church offered two churches: A tiny one in Burwood RdConcord and the second was the Uniting church in Rhodes.

The decision was made to purchase the Rhodes church, even though it was quite small, it had the potential to expand into the adjoining school grounds. The school had just closed that year. During June 1988 the move was made. Fr Samuel maintained his commitment to pray Saturdays and Sunday school remained on Saturday afternoons.

HH Pope Shenouda sent 4 priests to serve in Sydney. They arrived on 9/9/89. Originally Fr. Tadros Semaan was supposed to serve Abu Sefein parish (because he used to serve in a church bearing the saint's name in Cairo) and Fr. Pishoy Zaki was supposed to serve St. Anthony's and St. Paul's in Guildford. In a meeting the priests had with HH, just before they left to Australia HH suggested that Fr Pishoy take the small new church in Rhodes because he suffered ill health and Fr. Tadros take Guildford, the largest Coptic congregation at the time. St Mary & St Merkorious Abu Sefein Coptic Orthodox Church has now overtaken as one of the largest in the Diocese.

After Fr. Pishoy arrived, the service became regular and grew stronger day by day. Mass was held on Saturdays and Arabic on Sundays. That meant for many years, young people attended church on Saturdays only. Fr. Pishoy was not happy with that. He wanted to introduce radical ideas such as to have the church open every night for people to be able to find its doors open. He wanted a Mass every day. We asked, who would attend? He said: “All I need is one deacon to hold a mass!” 

In 1990, Fr Pishoy introduced the Sunday night Bible Study which started with only 5 persons and grew to be 100 some weeks. This meeting is still going strong. Fr. Pishoy tried to move Sunday School to Sunday a couple of times, but the people and servants resisted the change.

The time came when the adjoining pieces of land were required to cater for the increasing services. The School building at the back of the current church building was very hard to obtain, firstly from the State Government, and also from Concord Council. Plan after plan was drawn in order to convince the governments to sell the land. There was even an approach from HH to the then Liberal Premier of NSW, Nick Greiner. Later the Council bought the school (8 lots) and agreed that the land be used for parking and the school building for church and Sunday School activities for $1 per annum! This continued from 1990 to 2000. The interest still remained however to buy 2 lots to accommodate the church’s needs. Finally the council agreed to sell us one lot out of 8. Meanwhile Sunday school continued to be held on Saturday afternoons. It took a number of years before people agreed to change. When the change happened Sunday school and even church attendance began to grow and strengthened.

The growth led to the need for a second priest and after many processes of nomination the Lord chose Fr. Youhanna in 1993. The continued growth of the church and Sunday School was due to the super human efforts of these two dedicated priests. Fr Youhanna started English mass straight away in the school building. Years of further development followed, as the new land was purchased in 1995, the prospects of building a new church began to be looked into. Three architects were invited to submit ideas. The committee decided to adopt the scheme by Mr Ihab Sedrak. The scheme took until December 2000 to become a reality.

On the 4th December 1999, visiting bishops, clergy and other distinguished guests visited to celebrate the official opening of the new church building. The building wasn’t consecrated until 2002 during the visit of HH Pope Shenouda III.

The process of demolishing the old church building had begun a little bit earlier and 2002 also saw the completion of the new Sunday School Building which now caters for numerous services;  particularly meetings, canteen facilities and Sunday School.

There was a crying need for a third priest to serve the youth. After an unsuccessful local nomination process, Fr. Mikhail was transferred to the Church. His dynamic and loving service is already bearing fruit.

In 2003, the momentous purchase of the plot of land directly behind the church allowed for the development of the Fr Pishoy Kamel Youth Resource Centre and the Abu Sefein Sports Centre. These two integral parts of the youth service have allowed for the youth to congregate, serve and grow in the spiritual environment in order to fulfill the wise words of our beloved father HH Pope Shenouda III “A church with no youth, is a church with no future”.

The Sports Centre was officially opened in April 2006, and the Official Opening Day of all the Fr Pishoy Kamel Resource Centre facilities was conducted on the 25th March 2007 in conjunction with the commemoration of Fr Pishoy Kamel. The centre is home to many vital resources and more can be read about the centre here.