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The primitive temple was built, together with the Airport, in 1944 by the United States Armed Forces Command to meet the spiritual needs of the base's personnel. With ecumenical characteristics, it was intended for the practice of the main cults professed among those people, namely: Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism, a fact that at the time caused a certain admiration not only for the people of Mariense but for the Azoreans in general, who became aware of it.

The current temple dates back to a hermitage built by captain Manuel de Moura Landres and his wife, Inês Pereira, under the invocation of Nossa Senhora do Bom Despacho, according to a deed dated June 11, 1702 in the Book of Tombo of the Parish Church of Vila do Porto.

The church, built by the religious of the Society of Jesus under the invocation of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, is part of the Palace of the Captains-General, and can be visited in the summer, within the palace's museum route.

The construction of this church can be said to be contemporary with the Carmo da Horta Convent, built from 1651, which belonged to the Third Order of Carmo and began after the works on the convent itself and was only completed in the 18th century.

The Church of Our Lady of Carmo is a 16th-century building in Lagos, in the region of Algarve. It is also known as Igreja das Freiras (Nun's Church).

The hermitage was built in the 17th century next to the houses, on vineyard land in the fajã of São Lourenço (today next to the regional road), on the initiative of captain Manuel Curvelo da Costa, warehouseman at Fazenda Real, merchant and shipowner, and his wife, Maria Jácome de Macedo, who got married at the Main Church of Vila do Porto.

The hermitage is part of the so-called Dna manor. Branca de Sousa, having been erected at the time of the donatary captain Brás Soares de Sousa, in 1622, under the invocation of the Lady of Livramento, in thanksgiving after the Barbary Pirates attack recorded in 1616.

The hermitage has a hexagonal body. Inside, a single altar, with the image of Nossa Senhora do Monte carved in Lisbon, and several pedestals for various images.

The place of Cinco Ribeiras came to acquire some development, which increased when the Society of Jesus acquired a property there, like others on the island for summer vacations, on which they built, in the second half of the 17th century, a hermitage in the invocation of Our Lady. Lady of Pilar. Following the expulsion of the Jesuits a century later, the property passed into private hands, with the hermitage continuing to serve the community. In 1832, the old hermitage was donated to the people of the parish.

This hermitage under his invocation, was built on the initiative of Fernando de Loura Bettencourt and his wife, Mariana Margarida Coutinho, in 1722, next to their country house. It was decorated by both of them and endowed with the necessary assets to support it, according to a deed dated September 4th of that year.