National Shrine of Saint Joseph (Mandaue)

The National Shrine of Saint Joseph is a Roman Catholic church located in Mandaue in Cebu, Philippines. The church has been greatly renovated. Removed were four large pillars that supported the cupola. These pillars appear in old photographs of the church interior. A statue of St. Joseph and the Child Jesus beside him is in the style of 18th century ivories and may be from Jesuit times.

History

The Jesuits established Mandaue in 1600 as a mission after they had acquired lands in the area for the Colegio de San Ildefonso. They exchanged Mandaue for the Parian in Cebu and assigned a lay brother as administrator of the Mandaue estate. The mission did not seem to have a priest permanently assigned to it, because it is not around 1724, the Jesuit catalogues specify that a Jesuit was posted at Mandaue and that his responsibility extended to Talibon and Inabanga in Bohol. Thus, for more than a century, Mandaue may have been served by Jesuits of the Colegio who took turns in attending to the spiritual needs of the people. Although the Jesuits did build a church in Mandaue in honor of the Fatherhood and protection of St. Joseph, a 1789 report describes the church as “sufficiently deteriorated.”

The present Mandaue church is attributed to the initiative of a secular priest, named Don Ambrosio; Redondo (1886:157) describes the church as planned as a Greek cross with two octagonal chapels, 55 by 18 metres (60 yd × 20 yd) for the principal nave and 18.3 by 7.3 metres (20 yd × 8 yd) for the transept. In the 19th century, Mandaue was under the seculars, although it seems that the Recollects took charge of the parish for a while. The Mandaue church site together with the market was donated by the late Capitan Felix Ceniza whose grave now lies beneath the altar of St. Joseph Church.

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