The First Catholic Mass in The Philippines PDF

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A case study about where in the Philippines is the First mass held...

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Case study 1: WHERE DID THE FIRST CATHOLIC MASS TAKE PLACE IN THE PHILIPPINES? Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 20) – The National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) sustained findings that the Limasawa Island in Southern Leyte as the site of the 1521 Easter Sunday Mass, the first Catholic mass in the country. In a statement released on Wednesday, the NHCP Board of Commissioners signed Resolution No. 2 last July 15 adopting the report submitted by the investigating panel on the issue surrounding the 1521 Easter Sunday Mass in the Philippines. The panel was formed in November 2018 after several institutions, such as the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, made requests in authenticating the site of the 1521 Easter Sunday Mass. The requests were made in time for the 500th anniversary of the introduction of Christianity in the country in 2021. "The panel recommended that Limasawa Island, Southern Leyte, be sustained as the site of the 1521 Easter Sunday Mass," the commission concluded on their findings. Some proponents insisted Butuan City in Agusan del Norte as the real site of the first Catholic mass in the country, as evidenced by a monument erected in 1872 in Magallanes town commemorating the said religious event that happened there. After making trips in Butuan and Limasawa as part of their research, the NHCP panel found no sufficient evidence that the capital of Agusan del Norte hosted the first Catholic mass in the country. "The panel unanimously agreed that the evidences and arguments presented by the pro-Butuan advocates are not sufficient and convincing enough to warrant the repeal or reversal

of the ruling on the case by the NHI (National Historical Institute)," the NHCP panel said, citing the previous rulings made by the commission's forerunner National Historical Institute in 1995 and 2008 affirming Limasawa as the true site of the first Catholic mass in the country. The NHCP panel examined the Italian and French version of Italian chronicler Antonio Pigafetta’s accounts in the Magellan-Elcano expedition, which showed the coordinates of the 1521 Easter Sunday Mass are closer to Limasawa. The national historical commission also studied the 1895 journal articles of historians Trinidad Pardo de Tavera and Pablo Pastells, SJ, which revisited Pigafetta’s accounts and emphasized that Limasawa, not Butuan, as the site of the first Catholic mass in the country. The 1971 expedition of naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison and Colombian historian Mauricio Obregon and the accounts of Spanish naval engineer Ignacio Fernandez Vial and merchant marine captain Jose Luis Ugarte retraced the Magellan-Elcano voyage and concluded that Limasawa is the site of the first Catholic mass in the country, the NHCP found out in its study. The country’s first Catholic mass was officiated by Fr. Pedro Valderrama on March 31, 1521, upon orders of Portugese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. The Limasawa mass marked the birth of Roman Catholicism in the country, which remains as the nation's dominant religion in the country up to present. This latest affirmation from the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) put to end the issues on where the First Catholic Mass really happened here in the Philippines. This pronouncement holds strong credibility as it was based on the reliable persons’ investigation and research which also did consider examining past accounts about the event along with historians’ articles and journals as its primary sources. They also gathered evidences from pro-Butuan advocates which in the end found insufficient and thereby concludes and assert that it is really in Limasawa where the first catholic mass happened....