St. Francis Xavier (1506 1552) was a missionary of the Society of Jesus who worked principally in India (Goa, Malabar), the Moluccas, Japan and attempted to enter China. He died of fever on Dec. 3, 1552 on the island of Shangchuan, China, and never made it to the Chinese mainland. Historical and...
The Jesuit presence in Davao during the American period (1898–1946) marked a transformative era in the religious, educational, and socio-cultural development of the region. Building upon earlier missions, the Society of Jesus adjusted its methods to meet the challenges posed by a new political order,...
Spreading the Catholic faith during the years of Spanish rule in Davao was consistent with the difficulties of negotiating perilous ravines and crags, crossing the open seas, or climbing interior indigenous settlements. The presence of Moros in coastal areas and river mouths added more challenges...
Right from the first day when the conquering unit of Don Jose Oyanguren set foot at the Santa Ana waterfront (which half a century later became Davao’s first port), the symbolism and importance of religious icons or images were already aligned with historicity. Many of the...
The present-day San Pedro Metropolitical Cathedral, during the prewar era, was already a significant landmark that defined the town and where the central business district. Historically, the original church, built in the late 1840s under the Spaniards, was made of nipa and bamboo, later replaced with...
The feast of San Pedro, which falls every 29th of June, carries historical significance that dates back to the year when Davao, then a settlement, had about 70–80 houses, mostly occupied by settlers from Leyte, Samar, and other Visayan islands whom Oyanguren recruited. Its population...
For years, YouTube account Islamic Origins, visited so far by only 8,200 subscribers, has always been an interesting stop for open-minded Catholics and Muslims wanting to explore landscapes outside oral tradition. Managed by a former Franciscan monk, the vlog dissects Christianity and Islam from the...
The tribes of Davao, fragmented by identity and diversified by indigenous idiosyncrasies are the greatest contributors to the spread of Catholicism in Davao. Unlike the priests, the tribes conveyed their own gifts of participation in small packages that in their absence would have made the...
The spread of Catholicism in Davao following its Spanish conquest was not solely attributed to the missionaries; it was also shaped by the active (and sometimes reluctant) participation of local tribes. Their helps varied depending on their geographic location, political alliances, and degree of contact...
In the decades before the Americans took possession of the islands in 1898, Davao was a frontier where faith, culture, and power clashed. Jesuit missionaries, who returned to Mindanao in after nearly two centuries of absence, found themselves in one of the most complex and...