The call for a missionary church
Pope Francis has concluded his apostolic visit, yet left a lasting imprint of faith and hope that reinvigorated the Philippine church. The Holy Father during the mass in the Manila Cathedral spoke about the archipelagic church having "missionary potential" in his homily. Indeed, such statement beckons us back to our history and the nature of the infant Philippine church as a missionary church.
We all know our history of Magellan and the baptism of the first Filipino Christians in 1521. We also know how the church in its infancy almost died and the light of the gospel lost after the Battle of Mactan. However, another child, the Sto. Niño, stood patiently with the church until it was revitalized by the arrival of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and Rev. Andres de Urdaneta in 1565.
Rev. Urdaneta was previously chosen as prior and prelate for the expedition by the Augustinian authority in Mexico. Under his watch of being the first prelate or prediocesan ordinary in the Philippines, two churches were built: the first church was dedicated to St. Vitales (it would later be chosen as the now Cebu Cathedral of St. Vitales), and the second church which was also the first monastery built on the spot where the Sto. Niño was found (later would be elevated as Basilica del Sto. Niño). The nature of the first local Church in Cebu was an abbey vere nullius dioceseos (of no diocese) - an equivalent of a diocese in which a Christian community lacks a bishopric see and placed under a special care of an abbey or a monastery with the abbot or religious superior having canonical ecclesiastical authority the same manner of a diocesan bishop.
The era of the missionary church advanced its function of spreading the gospel with the Sto. Niño Church serving as its quasi-cathedral. The sight of the miraculous Holy Child emboldened the missionaries to Christianize even the farthest islands such as Japan, China, and the Moluccas.
Fr. Urdaneta left the care of the early Filipinos to Fr. Diego de Herrera. In 1569, the Cebuano church extended northwest and the friars laid the foundations of the Christian community in the Panay Island. A year later, the second batch of missionaries reached Cebu and by 1571, the Augustinians penetrated the Camarines region through the islands of Masbate, Leyte, Samar, and Burias. In the same year Fr. Herrera, who accompanied Legazpi, pushed north from Panay and the missionary church stretched to Manila. And from there, the evangelization further braved north to the Cagayan and Ilocos regions.
As the particular churches grew through the years, episcopal sees were erected: Santissimo Nombre de Jesus (Mother Church of Cebu), Manila (Church of Manila), Nueva Caceres (Church of Camarines), Nueva Segovia (Church of Cagayan-Ilocos). Manila was the first to be made diocese in 1578 and raised archdiocese in 1595. The Diocese of Cebu remained the country's spiritual capital and had the most extensive jurisdiction: the Visayan islands, the whole of Mindanao, the entire Micronesia (Caroline Islands, Northern Marianas, Guam, and Palau), and Palmas Island (the present Mingas Island of Indonesia). From these oldest sees other dioceses and archdioceses would be born out of them.
Pope Blessed Paul VI-during the fourth centenary of Christianity of the Philippines in 1965-in his apostolic letter Ut Clarificetur (on conferring the title of minor basilica to the Sto. Niño Church), he depicted in Latin the genesis of Christianity in the country and described the church as the "mater et caput… omnium ecclesiarum Insularum Philippinarum" (Mother and Head of All Churches in the Philippines). And this mother of all churches and basilicas is canonically under the equally historical Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral.
With the coming of the 500th anniversary of Christianity, Pope Francis urges the church in the Philippines again to be the missionary church in order to spread the light throughout all of Asia-and like the first prelate of the Philippines, Rev. Urdaneta and the rest of the missionaries, it's time we heed the call of the Sto. Niño through the Holy Father.