Building the cathedral continued slowly and in 1865 Bishop Viard appealed for funds. Sufficient was raised to extend the sanctuary and build a tower 32 metres high, whose important feature was a recess for a cast-iron statue of Our Lady which arrived from France in 1867 in time for the feast of the Nativity of Our Lady on 8 September. The statue was placed in the tower in memory of the consecration of the diocese in 1855 to the Immaculate Conception, which Bishop Viard had carried out, after he had proclaimed the newly pronounced dogma, as a specific remedy against any recurrence of the series of severe earthquakes felt in the province of Wellington over several months in that year. St Mary's Cathedral was considered "without exception the finest ecclesiastical structure in the colony". The expanded cathedral was opened by Bishop Viard on Christmas Day, 1867. It was designed by Christian Julius Toxward, who also designed the first synagogue in Wellington and the transepts added to Old St Paul's.