Our church community is officially called St. Gerard's Mission, the name on the  current St. Gerard's sign at Miller and Melmore. People ask about it.

Many dioceses use the term mission for churches that are not full parishes. In that sense, St. Gerard's has always been a mission of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver. The concept of mission also appealed to Fr. Gerard Beauregard, a founder who saw his role as that of a missionary, especially to the homeless of Downtown Vancouver.

The word mission has the same Latin root, miss-, as Mass, which comes from the word missa in Ite missa est. That phrase, the priest's final words in the traditional Latin Mass, is an idiom that freely translates as "Go, you are sent." Since our Christian community is called a mission, our name is a reminder that we are sent to be witnesses to God's love, to carry on Christ's work.