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Site of The First Mass
Site of The First Mass
OF THE
FIRST
MASS
There is a controversy regarding the
site of the first Mass ever celebrated
on Philippine soil. Pigafetta tells us
that it was held on Easter Sunday,
the 31st of March 1521, on an island
called"Mazaua".
Antonio • is an Italian scholar and explorer from
the Republic of Venice.
Pigafetta • He studied astronomy; geography and
cartography.
• around 1491 when he was born at
Vicenza, Republic of Venice or was know
now as Italy and died at the aged of 39-
40 around 1531.
• He travelled with the Portuguese
explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his
crew on their First Voyage around the
world.
• He was one of the 18 men who returned
to Spain in 1522.
When Ferdinand Magellan and his
European crew sailed from San Lucar de
Landing on Barrameda for an expedition to search for
Proclamati
Executive approval on June 19, 1960. The
legislative fiat declared The site in Magallanes,
on of the
Limasawa Island in the Province of Leyte, where the
first Mass in the Philippines was held is hereby
declared a national shrine to commemorate the
national birth of Christianity in the Philippines. Magallanes is
east of the island of Limasawa. In 1984 Imelda
shrine Marcos had a multi-million pesos Shrine of the
First Holy Mass built, an edifice made of steel,
bricks and polished concrete, and erected on top
of a hill overlooking barangay Magallanes,
Limasawa. A super typhoon completely wiped this
out just a few months later. Another shrine was
inaugurated in 2005.
Limasawa celebrates the historic and religious
coming of the Spaniards every March 31 with a
cultural presentation and anniversary program
dubbed as Sinugdan, meaning "beginning.". Yet
this has no reference at all to a Catholic mass
being held on March 31, 1521.
CONTROVERSIES
BETWEEN
LIMASAWA AND
MASAO/BUTUAN
Masao • 1872 : A monument to commemorate the
site of first mass on the Philippines was
erected in Butuan.