Augustinian Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus of the Philippines

The Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus of the Philippines of the religious Order of St. Augustine was founded in Spain in 1573 as an offshoot of the establishment of the first permanent Spanish settlements in the Philippines by Adelantado Miguel López de Legazpi. In 1565 Legazpi arrived in the Philippines at the head of an expedition on a mission from Viceroy Luis de Velasco of New Spain to discover islands west of the Moluccas. Enlisted to guide the perilous voyage was the famed navigator Andrés de Urdaneta.

Although a veteran of previous voyages across the Pacific, Urdaneta was reluctant to undertake anymore adventures for he had tired of such a lifestyle and had joined the Augustinian Order in Mexico. But when King Philip ll of Spain ordered the viceroy to "prepare a fleet of discovery" of the western islands near the Moluccas and wrote Urdaneta a letter asking him to guide the voyage, he felt compelled to obey for "the glory of God and the expansion of our faith." The Spanish Crown between 1525 and 1542 had sent several expeditions to strengthen its claim to the Moluccas, but none of these voyages had found a feasible return route across the Pacific to Mexico. Having ascended to the Spanish throne, Philip ll ordered his men to concentrate their efforts on the Philippines, a move that was also meant to avoid further conflict with the Portuguese, the main Spanish rival in this frenetic period of the Age of Discovery.

Urdaneta and his friar companions, composed of four other Augustinians that included Fray Martín de Rada, Fray Diego de Herrera, Fray Gamboa and Fray Aguirre, were the first Catholic missionaries to evangelize the Philippine Islands, playing a crucial role in the evolution of the archipelago into today's only Catholic nation in Asia. Their first contact with the natives was in Cebu, where Legazpi founded the first Spanish settlement in a spot where his men had found a statue of the Child Jesus in a burnt hut after a skirmish with the inhabitants. He named the place Santísimo Nombre de Jésus in honor of the Holy Child. The Spaniards considered it miraculous to have found the statue, a gift from Ferdinand Magellan to the wife of the chieftain of Cebu after her conversion to Catholicism in 1521.

Hardships brought about by lack of food, harsh living conditions, and attacks mounted by the Portuguese from the Moluccas forced Legazpi to set sail for Panay island, where he replenished his supplies and planned for a definitive voyage to Luzon that led to over 300 years of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines with the establishment of Intramuros, Manila on June 24, 1571 as the capital of the new Spanish colony.

To provide a steady source of missionaries to the Philippines, the Augustinians created the Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus of the Philippines, followed by the formation of a seminary in Valladolid, Spain. In Manila, the Augustinians had been given a piece of land within the walled city of Intramuros to build a church and a monastery.

San Agustín Church and Monastery is closely tied to the history of the Philippines for it was here where the Augustinians plotted to undertake the evangelization of the country and first introduced Western ideas to the natives while serving as a vanguard of resistance against the state. De Rada denounced abuses committed by Spanish authorities against the local population and reported these to Philip ll. His vigorous advocacy for justice has earned him a place in history as the "Defender of the Natives." It was also in Intramuros where botanist Fray Manuel Blanco built a botanical garden for his plant experiments that became the basis for his internationally-acclaimed book "Floras de Filipinas," a comprehensive treatise on Philippine plants.

Since 1565 to the present, more than 3,000 Augustinian missionaries have dedicated themselves to apostolic, social, and cultural labor in the Philippines, China and Japan. Before the Philippine Revolution of 1898, the Augustinians administered over 400 hundred schools and churches in the islands. In 1904 they established the University of San Agustin in Iloilo City that eventually emerged as the largest Augustinian educational institution in the world in terms of student population. They have also served as the custodian of the Shrine of Señor Santo Niño, which houses the centuries-old image recovered by Legazpi's men in 1565, within Asia's only basilica: the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño de Cebu, now under the care of the all-Filipino Province of the Santo Niño of Cebu that separated from the mother province in 1984.

References

Blas Sierra de la Calle, OSA, "Friar's Museum Showcases Finest Far Eastern Art Collection in Spain," in Search, The Augustinian Journal of Cultural Excellence (Makati) I (2004), p. 9.
Policarpo F. Hernández, OSA, "A Church Built for the Ages Fuses Two Alien Cultures," in Search, The Augustinian Journal of Cultural Excellence (Makati) I (2004), pp. 45-55.

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