Historically, whenever the Catholic faith has been introduced into a culture, the fusion of the Gospel with native society produces a variant of Christianity unique to that culture. If we were to look at Catholicism in, say, Ireland, Mexico, and Vietnam, we would of course see the characteristics that we find amongst Catholics anywhere in the world—but we would also see many things unique to each place, products of the fusion of the Catholic faith with native culture.
The Church now prefers to call this process “inculturation”, but it used to be known as Christianization—the process whereby the Gospel takes hold of a culture, reforms, and orders the natural gifts of that culture towards Christ. In this essay we will learn a bit about how the process worked in the Philippines after the arrival of the Spaniards.
The Diocese of Manila and Domingo de Salazar
The first diocese of the Philippines was that of Manila, established by Pope Gregory XIII in 1579 by the papal bull Illius Fulti Præsidio. At first, the diocese encompassed all Spanish territories in Asia and was subordinated to the Archdiocese of Mexico. Although the Spaniards had introduced Christianity in Cebu much earlier than Manila, the abandonment of the Cebuan mission after the Battle of Mactan (1521) had left Cebu deprived of pastors. Missionary focus shifted north to Luzon and the seat of Spanish power at Manila.
The first Bishop of Manila was the Dominican Domingo de Salazar. Salazar had served for years in the missions of Florida and Mexico. He was personally chosen by King Philip II to serve as the first Bishop of Manila. Originally Salazar viewed the bishopric as simply a steppingstone to get to China, his real goal. He later wrote, “One of the reasons which made me accept this bishopric [of Manila] was the fact that these Islands are near China…For a long time I have had the conversion of that kingdom at heart, and with that thought I came to these Islands.” His work in the Philippines would be fraught with challenges; of the twenty Dominicans who accompanied him from Spain, over half died en route and of the remainder only one was healthy enough to make it all the way to Manila.
Upon taking his see in 1581, Salazar saw the biggest obstacle to the conversion of the Filipinos was their mistreatment at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors. As they had done in New Spain, the Spanish gentry of the Philippines had gotten accustomed to indenturing natives to labor on their estates in a status that was scarcely different than slavery. He worked tirelessly to improve the lot of the Filipino people, earning for himself the nickname “the Las Casas of the Philippines”, after the famous Bartolomé de Las Casas, the episcopal defender of the natives of the New World. A major effort of Salazar was the Manila Synod of 1582, whereby the zealous bishop attempted to stamp out slavery in the Philippines and rectify the abuses of the Spaniards. The work was laborious; once, when old, he had to return all the way in person to plead the cause of the Filipino people before the royal court. Salazar was ultimately successful, however. The Spanish court supported Bishop Salazar’s work and passed legislation correcting abuses against the Filipinos.
Salazar set an admirable example for future Filipino bishops to follow. He issued many decrees regulating clerical discipline. He took the church of St. Potenciana, founded by Legazpi, and elevated it into the Philippines’ first cathedral and placed it under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The original structure—built of bamboo, wood, and palm branches—burned down in 1583; a stone church was erected a few years later. He established the first college in the Philippines, dedicated to the care of orphans and the education of girls (1589). Later colleges would follow, such as the Jesuit Colegio de Manila (1590) and the University of Santo Tomas, founded in 1611 by one of Salazar’s successors Miguel de Benavides. Salazar also established a hospital and worked ceaselessly to provide for the poor, once even selling his pectoral cross to relieve the needs of the impoverished. When he died in 1594, the inscription on his tomb called him “Father of the Poor, and Himself Truly Poor.” He was a model bishop in every respect.
Cebu and Missionary Journeys to the South
By the early 1600s the Church in the Philippines was sufficiently organized to undertake more systematic missionary work. Three more dioceses were erected (Nueva Cáceres, Nueva Segovia, and Cebu). Christianity had already been spreading throughout Cebu and the Visayas since the time of Legazpi and the baptism of Humabon. From 1600 onward, the spread of the faith would travel southward, from Cebu into the rest of Visayas and Mindanao, which was lumped in with the Diocese of Cebu. The massive size of the Diocese of Cebu proved a daunting task for the missionaries, who were too few and too spread out to make any inroads into the south, and the natives often viewed them with suspicion.
It became clear that a different strategy was needed to get the Gospel into the far flung reaches of the south. The Jesuits of Cebu came up with the idea of training young Filipino men to serve as catechists to accompany them on their journeys. Two schools were established, at Cebu City and on the island of Bohol. Here Filipino Christian boys were rigorously trained in virtue, doctrine, and the Jesuit manner of living. Now accompanied by many native Christians of impeccable character, the Jesuits fanned out across the Visayas and had much more success at winning over the skeptical southern tribes.
Cebu would hold an important place in the heart of Philippine Christianity. Though Manila was the first diocese, it was in Cebu that the first converts were made back when Magellan first landed in 1521. Pope Paul VI in 1965 called Cebu’s Basilica del Santo Niño the “Mother and Head of all Churches in the Philippines” and a “symbol of the birth and growth of Christianity” in the region. Sixteen years later, Pope St. John Paul II called Cebu “the cradle of Christianity” in the Philippines.
The first Bishop of Cebu was the Augustinian Pedro de Agurto. Bishop Agurto followed up on the early missionary successes of the Jesuits by summoning a synod in 1600 to formulate a plan for evangelization. As a result of the synod, a catechism in the Cebuan language was published, which greatly aided the evangelization of the far-flung Visayas.
As was the case in the Americas, the Spanish evangelization of the Philippines was spearheaded by religious communities. We have already mentioned the work of the Dominicans, Jesuits, and Augustinians. In 1621 the Recollects arrived. The Recollects—and offshoot of the Augustinians—had extensive missionary experience in New France amongst the Huron tribes. This experience would be valuable in the wildernesses of the Visayas, where Filipino tribes lived in isolated settlements like the Indians of New France. The Recollects fanned out into the Filipino countryside, forming little mission communities called “reductions” (reducciones). Originally just small stone churches or convents, the reductions attracted converted natives who settled there to live with the Recollects. Many reductions were the nuclei of today’s towns and cities. Here, Christian natives were organized into communities on the European model, with homes in town oriented around a central plaza and stone church. Opposite the church always stood the municipio, the government building, a tangible sign of Spanish power in every town.
Blood of the Martrys: St. Pedro Calungsod
The missionaries continued to spread out across the thousands of islands in the Philippine archipelago, bringing the Gospel of Christ to the region’s far flung tribes. They did not confine themselves to the Philippines, however. Missionaries sometimes left the Philippines altogether to visit many of the other islands of the southwest Pacific. One of these was St. Pedro Calungsod, a Filipino lay catechist who came to the Micronesian island of Guam with the Jesuit missionaries in 1669. Guam was inhabited by the Chamorro people, who happily accepted Christianity and were baptized in droves by the Jesuits. Calunsgod would become one of the earliest Filipinos to suffer martyrdom for Christ.
The promising beginnings on Guam were soon soured by the Chamorro macanjas, medicine men. The macanjas were threatened by the growth of the Church. As the Chamorro increasingly turned to the sacraments instead of the magic of the medicine men, the macanjas looked for some way to accuse the missionaries and turn the people against them. Their opportunity came with the arrival of a Chinese escaped criminal named Choco. He told the Chamorro that the baptismal water used by the Jesuits was poisonous. This turned the Chamorro chief, Mata’pang, strongly against the Jesuits.
Meanwhile, however, St. Pedro Calungsod had assisted the Jesuit priests at the baptism of Mata’pang’s newborn daughter when the chieftain was away. Mata’pang’s wife was a Christian and had asked for the girl to be baptized. When Mata’pang heard that his own daughter had been subjected to the waters of baptism, he was furious. He grabbed a handful of spears and headed off to find the missionaries.
Mata’pang and his men found the Jesuit priest Fr. Diego Luis de San Vitores and Pedro Calunsgod on the road and slaughtered them both. Mata’pang and his men stripped the bodies of the two men, tied heavy stones to their feet, and sunk them in the ocean. Then Mata’pang took the crucifix of Fr. San Vitores and smashed it with a rock while blaspheming God. Pedro Calungsod and Fr. Diego Luis de San Vitores would both be revered as martyrs. Pedro was canonized in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI and is now honored as a saint; his Feast Day is April 2. Fr. San Vitores was beatified in 1985 by John Paul II.
Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, priests both diocesan and religious continued to saturate the Philippine islands with the Gospel of Christ, until gradually the paganism faded and the new generations of Filipinos embraced the Catholic faith more wholeheartedly. Catholicism became deeply interwoven with Filipino culture. Further south, however, in Mindanao, the missionaries were fewer and had less success with the Muslim Moros. Here the Spaniards were content to make them into vassals, leaving off the work of conversion till a future time. This initial failure to Christianize the Moros of Mindanao would be the source of much grief in later times.
The above text is taken from the book The Story of the Philippines: God’s Rampart in Asia by Phillip Campbell (Arx Publishing: 2022).
Phillip Campbell, “The Christianization of the Philippines,” Unam Sanctam Catholicam, November 25, 2025. Available onlne at https://unamsanctamcatholicam.com/2025/11/the-christianization-of-the-philippines