Built by the Jesuits in 1577 in a Baroque-Jesuit mannerist style, financed by donations from the faithful, as well as by Friar Luís Álvaro de Távora, Commander of Leça do Balio, of the Order of Malta, whose coat of arms atop the main facade, the Church and the São Lourenço Convent were erected with strong opposition from the city council and the population. However, the followers of Santo Inácio de Loyola ended up managing to found the highly sought after school with free classes, which quickly achieved a notable success. The population's opposition was not directed at the Jesuits, but at the college they intended to institute due to the privileges that citizens had that prevented the nobles and nobles from staying within the city for a period of more than three days. Thus, the school that was to be built would call children noble and noblemen who would necessarily have to reside in the city, but through some artifices of the religious the opposition of the bourgeois was overcome.

With the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1759, by order of the Marquis of Pombal, the church was donated to the University of Coimbra until its purchase by the Barefoot Friars of Santo Agostinho who stayed there from 1780 to 1832. These friars came from Spain in 1663, installing it was initially in Lisbon, on the site of Grilo, where they quickly gained the sympathy of the village, earning the name "friars-grilos", thus giving the name to the church where they were in Porto.