Founded on Feb. 2, 1921, in Quebec, Canada, the Foreign Mission Society of Quebec is known more by its PME initials, or Société des Missions-Étrangères du Québec in French. The first attempt to send Canadian missionaries to the Philippines to conduct pastoral work in the Chinese...
Long before Davao del Sur was created as a province, the entire area was known simply to the residents as Santa Cruz, a sprawling territory that was home to the Bagobo tribespeople. Over time, the once vast forest and coastal expanse was systematically subdivided into...
The early missions in Davao, over two centuries before the conquest of the gulf, were not spared from dissent between religious orders over issues not of their own making. At the time, Cebu was a diocese after it was set up as Abbacy nullius in...
Fr. Saturnino Urios, SJ, after whom a university he founded in Butuan was named, was born in 1843 in Valencia, Spain, during a time of significant religious and political upheaval in Europe. A man of deep faith and academic rigor, he entered the Society of...
A Jesuit missionary from Spain, Fr. Mateo Gisbert, SJ, was among the earliest Christian evangelizers to bring the Roman Catholic faith to Mindanao during the Spanish colonial period. His mission in Davao, which took place in the latter half of the 19th century, marked a...
Characteristically calm, soft-spoken, amiable, and smiling, Fr. James P. Noonan was a devoted Maryknoll priest whose life was marked by leadership, compassion, and a deep commitment to serving poor communities across the globe. As head priest of Compostela, Davao de Oro, parishioners looked up to...
On December 28, 2009, in faraway Monipuripara, Bangladesh, a saintly priest, once the parish priest of Compostela, Davao de Oro, died serving the Muslims and Hindus. He was 81. Born on June 20, 1928, in Racine, Michigan, USA, Fr. Douglas F. Venne, M.M., was the son...
Roughly eight kilometers from the city center, Tigatto used to be a Moro enclave as much as all other precolonial waterways around the gulf of Davao were. During the Spanish period, after it was reduced and turned into a Christian village, it hosted a number...
Until the arrival of the Jesuits in 1868, Christianization of areas north of the gulf of Davao was inexistent. Earlier, the Recollects penetrated regions in the eastern seaboard of Davao, but their efforts to convert indigenous tribes and Moros to the faith were limited. The first...
Organized in 1988, the National Movement for Free elections (NAMFREL), a Church-led initiative formed to expose any form of pressure and cheating in every nationwide Philippine political exercise, was not among the first to discover that fraudulent polls have long been allowed to prosper with...