The start of the massive conversion of the Moros in Davao to Catholicism took place in 1894-95, just years before the end of Spanish colonial rule. On September 28, 1894, for instance, Father Urios baptized 127 Moros, many of them datus and panditas. By October,...
Deemed as one of Davao City’s famous historical landmarks, the Metropolitan Church of Saint Peter, also known as San Pedro Cathedral, dates its origin to 1848. The first makeshift chapel, dedicated to San Pedro, Roman Catholicism’s first pope, was built in its present location after the...
A decree issued on July 30, 1860 by Queen Isabel II led to the creation of a politico-military government in Mindanao and its neighboring islands. Under Article 13 of the edict, which was published in the Gaceta of Madrid on August 5, Mindanao was subdivided...
He was not a Filipino but when he died on October 18, 1927, the entire town mourned, and when he was buried in the shoreline of Cateel, Davao Oriental, everyone was in attendance. Fr. Jose Grimal, a Spanish Jesuit missionary, died when he was only 51...
Founded in 1883 by Jesuit priest Fr. Domingo Bove, the history of Cuabo, a village in Mati City, is more cursed than tragic, and nature, thrice over, played a violent role in its life. Its first settlers, chosen no less by the priest and known...
In Davao, the story of the Catholic Church cannot be told without acknowledging the quiet and persistent work of the Gagmay’ng Kristohanong Katilingban (GKK), the basic ecclesial communities that animate parish life across urban barangays and the most remote sitios. Built on small faith-sharing circles,...
The PME Fathers (Société des Missions-Étrangères du Québec), Canadian missionaries sent to Davao, played a crucial role in the Catholic evangelization of the region before and during World War II. Their mission was relatively young: they had taken over from the Jesuits in Davao in...
While Freemasons in Spain were known to have flourished in number a couple of centu-ries after the Crusades, their arrival in the Philippines was not organized. Many of the Ma-sons who served in the colonial period were military officers and administrators already affil-iated with the...
In the missionary world, a personal space far from the family, one of the most challenging aspects of the priestly tradition while on a fieldwork, is the struggle to fight off loneliness. During Spanish times, reaching remote missions was not about the hardships along the...
Five years after ecumenism, the movement or effort aimed at promoting unity and cooperation among different Christian denominations, was coined during the 1910 World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh, Scotland, the rivalry between the Catholics and the Protestants was not on spiritual; it extended to...