The Franciscans (formerly Bernardians) have been present in Wschowa since 1456. Their first church of St Francis and St Bernardine and their timber-framed and half-timbered monastery from 1462 were surrounded by a courtyard, garden and cemetery, in which St Anne's chapel was built. 

In December 1558, the buildings that had burned down in the previous months were abandoned . The Franciscans went to Kościan or Głogów. In 1564 the monastery land was sold to two noble officials from Greater Poland. The land, however, was treated as church land and remained free of buildings. 

The Franciscans considered it a point of honour to regain their former post. For the Wschowa monastery was the only monastery lost to the Polish province in the turmoil of the Reformation. The matter was not easy in view of the fact that the monastery grounds had been divided into plots of land and in view of the hostile attitude towards the monks of the majority of the town's Protestant inhabitants. However, the town was royal property and the final word belonged to the king. The efforts of the starost of Wschowa, Hieronim Radomicki, and the support of the nuncio Antoni Santacrocki, resulted in Sigismund III Vasa recognising the monks' right to their former property. Eventually, thanks to the efforts of the Bishop of Poznan (Wschowa belonged to the diocese of Poznan) and Hieronim Radomicki, a settlement with the magistrate was signed on 25 May 1629, and a month later, on 25 June 1629, the provincial's delegates took possession of the former post. 

The reoccupation did not mean that the construction of a church and monastery was immediately started. For the time being, the monks lived in the houses on the returned property, and they performed their divine services in the chapel of St Anne in the cemetery, which had been restored to Catholic worship even though it still remembered the monks' first stay there. Slow preparations for the building, which took almost nine years, were undertaken. A generous benefactor, the Opaliński courtier Mikołaj Tarnowiecki, who became the main founder of the church, was won over to the cause. Dying in 1640, he bequeathed his entire estate to continue the construction. The funds provided and the material collected enabled the construction of the church to begin in 1638. The pace of work had to be rapid. As early as the following year, it was possible to celebrate Mass and hold divine services in the presbytery. Around 1644, the church was completed and was originally intended to be dedicated to St Anne, but was eventually given the name of St Joseph. The building had features of the late Renaissance style with elements of the early Baroque, and referred to Gothic traditions through its brick façade, external buttresses and casement windows. Although the monastery chronicle did not provide us with the name of the architect, the architectural features point to Christopher Bonadura the Elder (c. 1582-1670). The new temple, dedicated to St Joseph, was consecrated on 25 April 1652 by Marian Maciej Kurski, suffragan bishop of Poznań (1600-1681). 

The tower was added according to a design by the Rustin architect Jozef Sztyer in 1742. It was one storey higher than the present one and had a clock placed in 1785. Two years later, in 1787, new bells were hung. In this form, the tower survived until 5 September 1821, when a lightning strike burned it out and destroyed it. It was rebuilt in more modest dimensions in 1826. 

Another later building is the Chapel of the Holy Cross, adjacent to the church to the north, in which the old oak Gothic Figure of Christ Crucified, famous for its graces, is placed. As the 1724 chronicle reports, it came from the former church burnt down by the Lutherans in 1558. Thrown into a pit and covered with rubble, it miraculously survived and lived to see the return of the monks, who found it in 1638 while digging the foundations for a new church. Probably the increase in veneration was the reason for the construction in 1731 of a separate chapel at the main entrance of the church, in which the miraculous crucifix was placed. The chapel had a burial crypt. The increasing worship and the modesty of the chapel at that time were the reasons for its extensive reconstruction in 1776. 

The entire churchyard and the stone statue of St Joseph, which had been there since 1742, were surrounded by cloisters built between 1745 and 1746, with two corner chapels built into them: one dedicated to St Felix to the north-east and the other to Our Lady of Consolation to the south-east. 

A Baroque gate, surmounted by a sandstone statue of the Immaculate, leads into the courtyard from the outside. The western part of the cloisters, adjacent to the Chapel of the Holy Cross, decorated with five stone figures, is also the entrance to the church. 

At the same time as the construction of the church, a new brick-built monastery was erected adjacent to it on the south, being a building grouped around a quadrilateral courtyard, known as a cloister. The monastery was intended for 20 monks. A sacristy was placed in the east wing. In 1727, the lower cloisters of the monastery were covered with frescoes depicting the miracles of St Anthony. The monastery buildings also included a brewery, a retreat house, a bakery and outbuildings: a cowshed, pigsties, a granary and barns. The farmhouse, accessed from the north through a distinctive gate built in 1721 with gardens, was surrounded by a wall.

The beautiful polychrome decoration of the church was completed in 1746. The polychrome in the presbytery, depicting the glorification of the Holy Trinity, was made by the monks Walenty Żebrowski and Liboriusz Staniszewski. Their work also includes the decoration of the west wall behind the organ and the decoration of the side walls. The polychrome decoration of the nave, depicting the marriage of St Joseph and Mary surrounded by groups of saints, was made by the Głogów painter Joachim (Johann) Ernest Engelfeldner (Eggenfeldner).

In the monastery church there was a miracle-working image of the Virgin Mary. The monastery chronicler, Fr Augustyn Ciepliński, wrote: "In the church there is an image of the Virgin Mother of God that is overflowing with miracles and is also famous for the numerous silver plates, gold, pearl and precious stone necklaces left by the faithful as votive offerings [for granted requests]". In the cloisters, built between 1745 and 1746, the southern chapel was dedicated to Our Lady of Consolation, with copies of the image of Our Lady of Passau, venerated as Helper of the Faithful.

After the second partition of Poland, Wschowa fell to Protestant Prussia. State policy was to abolish all monasteries altogether. The first such move was an official decree issued in 1794, restricting the admission of novices before the age of 25. In 1798, they were forbidden to be admitted at all. Thanks to periods of relaxation of the ordinance, novices continued to enter the monastery until 1816, when an edict banned the admission of new candidates, condemning monasteries to slow extinction. Slowly, the monasteries of the Greater Poland Province of the Bernardines became empty, and when the last priest died, the monastery was closed down. Such a tragic fate also befell Wschowa. The last priest, and at the same time superior, was Fr Cherubin Maciejowski, who died on 17 December 1827. Maciej Cieszyński remained at the friary after his death. The commissioner in charge of the province, Fr Julian Fujarski, tried at all costs to maintain the friary. He did not succeed because of the lack of priests. The painful decision to close the monastery was taken on 6 January 1828, when Fr J. Fujarski handed over the administration of the monastery to the dean of Wschowa, Fr Konstanty Lesinski of Wloszakowice. The latter secured the monastery's silverware in the parish church. The church and the monastery were sealed and placed under the care of the magistrate of Wschowa. 

On 23 June 1828, the monastery's furnishings were sold at public auction and the monastic servants were rewarded with the proceeds. The facilities were to be handed over to the Evangelical community of New Town in exchange for its burnt church. In 1832, the new parish priest of Wschowa, Rev. R. P. Berger, made efforts to have the Catholic community take over the deteriorating monastery facilities. He presented the matter and plans for their use to Archbishop Martin Dunin. He planned to place a Catholic school in the monastery and provide accommodation for three teachers. The parish vicar, who would also be rector of the monastery church, teach religion and supervise the teachers, was also to live there. The monastery land and outbuildings were to be leased and the income earned was to pay the teachers. The parish was also to take over the income from the monastery's endowment. These plans came to fruition in 1835, when, by royal decree, in the absence of interest from the Protestant community, the entire building was handed over to the Catholic parish. Catholic services began to be held in the church and in the monastery in 1838 a Catholic primary school was placed, which operated until the end of the 1920s, as well as accommodation for teachers and the parish vicar. In the 19th century a new wing was added to the monastery to serve as a Catholic school. A two-storey building with a usable attic was therefore built, which is now the main building of the Centre. The building has a gable position and adjoins the north-west corner of the historic monastery complex.

Due to the abolition of religious schools in the Third Reich, a kindergarten was placed in part of the monastery building and flats were arranged in part. 

Stanisław Helsztyński, who stayed in Wschowa from autumn 1905 until Easter of the following year, recalls the Wschowa monastery in the following way: 'The school was housed in a gloomy post-convent building, to which, however, I soon became attached as something very close. Namely, having gone to this post-Bernardine monastery, or rather church, on a Sunday, I noticed with indescribable amazement and joy that it was full of monuments, tombstones and plaques written in Polish. The Polish names, coats of arms and Polish speech emboldened me so much that I somehow looked at the world with a happier face. Nowhere was I more at ease than in this courtyard with the statue of St Joseph, Christ Crucified in the outer apse, in the midst of a garth surrounded by the Stations of the Cross and other monuments remembering the period of the free Republic of Poland. I would still like to be in that fenced-off square in front of the church one day. I felt as if I were in a native village there. Perhaps the baroque gestures of the church's figures appealed to me so strongly, perhaps their number and wealth. I was animated by the mars castellans, portrayed on coffin plates. Among them, I regained again the freedom of spirit, exalted from Kosovo, from its meadows, fields and forests and people, among whom there was not a single German".

In addition to the priests, the monastery building was occupied by various tenants. Between 1868 and 1879, the Sisters of St. Elizabeth, who had arrived in Wschowa, lived in the convent. Towards the end of the war, at the beginning of January 1945, an old people's home, evacuated from bombarded Breslau, was placed in the convent, run by the Sisters of Mary Immaculate. After the end of hostilities there were 45 wards, of whom by the end of 1945. 20 had died. They were buried in the cemetery next to the church between the cloisters. As the sisters did not receive any help from the state until September 1945, the burden of upkeep fell on the first monks who had already arrived at that time. The sisters finally left the convent in 1948, moving to Klenica. The church, according to witnesses, was used as a school church, with one Mass on Sunday and the indulgence of St Joseph. It had been closed since the 1920s. The Germans stored scrap metal in it during the war.

After World War II, the monastery and church buildings were returned to the Franciscans, and the former school building from the 19th century was nationalised. From the 1950s to the 1990s the building was used as the State Kindergarten No. 2. During this time (probably in the 1960s-70s) a contemporary single-storey building with a flat roof was added to the east side of the building, and a two-storey building, also with a flat roof, was added to the west side. In 1995, the Property Commission returned the building to its last owner (the administrator and investor in the construction of the convent school), i.e. the parish of St. Stanislaus the Bishop and Martyr in Wschowa. In 2017, the plot of land together with the building was notarially returned to the original owners of the site - the Franciscans of the Province of St. Francis of Assisi of the Order of Friars Minor - Franciscans in Poland, based in Poznań. The building is on loan to the FOR - OIKOS Foundation.