The Philippines: Open Spaces for Catholic Worship

Abstract

The Philippines is an island nation in Southeast Asia with a population of approximately 100 million. Its hot and humid climate makes it common for community buildings to be permanently ventilated or even open to the elements. The country’s susceptibility to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and typhoons, also imparts unique characteristics to its architecture, including its religious buildings. Additionally, apart from tiny East Timor, the Philippines is the only nation in the region where the vast majority of the population professes the Catholic faith. The openness of spaces used for Catholic worship can be understood not only from a climatic standpoint but also as a reflection of the Filipino people’s identity. Historically, they have not confined their faith celebrations to the interior of churches but have instead utilized public spaces for religious expressions, making these spaces a means of communal affirmation of their national identity. This article explores the typology of open religious architecture in the Philippines, examining both the physical connection between indoor and outdoor spaces—highlighting the environmental or climatic factors—and the temporary nature of its construction, which emphasizes the social or identity dimension. By doing so, it reveals the links between form, function, and local culture in the country’s religious architecture.

1. Introduction

The Republic of the Philippines is an archipelago of 7107 islands with an area of approximately 300,000 km² and a coastline of approximately 36,000 km. Its population was estimated to be 109 million in 2020, spread over about 880 inhabited islands.

The Philippines is located in the Tropic of Cancer, and no part of its territory is more than two hundred kilometers from the sea. This means that the average temperature throughout the year is over 30 °C, the humidity is always very high, and the rainfall is intense and abundant. In addition, the country is located in the middle of the Pacific Ring of Fire, between two continental plates, which makes it prone to all kinds of natural disasters, such as periodic droughts, strong typhoons, earth movements, or volcanic eruptions.

If, in any part of the world, the weather conditions determine the construction systems and the general appearance of buildings, in our case, the equatorial climate typical of Southeast Asia requires buildings surrounded by open spaces, with large umbraculums and wide eaves on the roofs, since people usually live on the street and the interiors are only occupied at night or when it rains. In the Philippines, architecture—including religious architecture—needs to breathe, which is why churches are almost never completely enclosed but semi-open, where air circulates and refreshes the environment (Marra 2011).

2. Materials and Methods

This article seeks to trace a sort of typological cartography of open religious architecture in the Philippines, analyzing it from the point of view of both the temporality of its construction and the physical connection between the interior and the exterior, in order to make explicit the links between use, climate, and local culture that manifest in the country’s religious architecture. First of all, based on a series of remarkable examples, we show the different resources that architects have implemented to respond to the conditions of openness that the Catholic faithful—more than 80% of the population—demand for their places of worship. Secondly, it explains the conditions that led to the construction of temporary open-air worship spaces for the multitudinous events held in the country over the last hundred years and which show that the Filipino people do not limit themselves to manifesting their faith within the four walls of a temple but have historically used public space for their religious manifestations and, therefore, as an area of communal affirmation of their national uniqueness.

There are well-documented texts on Philippine architecture, not only that of the Spanish period (Klassen 2010; Pérez III 1994; Lico 2019; Martin 2024). The first to study as a whole its modern religious architecture was Fernández-Cobián (2021). In his recent book “Arquitectura religiosa contemporánea en Filipinas” Fernández-Cobián (2024), an abundant bibliography can be found. On the other hand, a few years ago, the topic of outdoor celebration spaces was dealt by himself in an article on ephemeral architectures for Catholic liturgy (Fernández-Cobián 2010), where he expanded on what was presented in his book “El espacio sagrado en la arquitectura española contemporánea” Fernández-Cobián (2005); recently, Carcelén González (2021) has delved somewhat deeper into this topic. During the 3rd International Congress of Contemporary Religious Architecture entitled “Beyond the sacred building. Arquitectura y evangelización”, which was held in Seville in 2013, numerous examples of this type of architecture were shown (Arán, Arboix-Alió y Mária, López-Arias, Mardones, Sterken, etc.); but none of them dealt with the Philippines (Fernández-Cobián 2013).

I am aware that, at times, this article may strike the reader as a review article, since that is exactly its objective: to open a barely explored field and put on the table a series of examples that show the different attitudes that Filipino architects have had when facing an open-air church project.

3. Religious Architecture and Climate

3.1. Liturgical Guidelines on Church Architecture

In 1999, the Paul VI Institute of Liturgy of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) published a document entitled “Liturgical Guidelines on Church Architecture”, in which it expressed concern about the future of religious architecture in the country (Paul VI Institute of Liturgy 1999). It seemed that the newer churches did not conform to the requirements of the Second Vatican Council, that too much attention had been given to their external appearance or simply to achieving an emotionally touching appearance but not so much to responding to the nature and actions of the liturgy to make worship buildings fit their purpose, their space, and their time. The text—which, moreover, was not widely disseminated—was an orderly compendium of the principles and practical norms that could already be found in various official documents of the Holy See and in others of the CBCP itself, to which were added some criteria for the inculturation of religious architecture.

The last part of the document, entitled “Towards a Filipino Religious Architecture”, went down to very specific details. For the Philippine bishops, the process of building a church requires a dialogue with the local culture, in which “the planning, design and layout of liturgical space are inspired and influenced by the planning, design and layout of Filipino houses and buildings” ($ III). Thus, the traditional Filipino family house, with its typological invariants, was held up as an example of “the Filipino Church house”, both because, in it, the person was the center of the space and because of its optimal climatic performance.

In any corner of the planet, as stated before, vernacular architecture is determined by the climate but also by factors as diverse as the materials and technology available, historical experience, or the worldview of its inhabitants and by other, more specific characteristics, which, in the case of the Philippines, materializes in the visual lightness and transparency of the interiors, the fondness for ornament integrated into the structure, the color and richness of textures, the “space surrounded by space”, or even in the typical steeply pitched roofs (Pérez III 1989). The bishops wanted the new Philippine churches to share all these notes. According to the document, new buildings for worship should consist of a single enclosure, with flowing and interrelated spaces that give priority to the place of assembly, with open atriums that enable the relationship between the faithful before and after the celebration, and in a festive atmosphere (Wendt 1998). Finally, they considered it important that churches harmonize with their surroundings and, at the same time, stand out as the most significant community building for communal gathering and worship ($ III 2.1).

At this point, I would like to highlight empirical evidence. Anyone who visits Manila and strolls through its barangays can easily come across small, latticed churches open to the four winds (Figure 1). Such elementary structures, which, at first glance, may seem to be an exception, are very common. The reason for this is that, in the Philippines, as in much of the Asia-Pacific area, churches and other similar buildings designed for human gatherings adopt passive strategies of climate control and therefore manifest themselves as semi-open spaces, to the point of constituting an invariant of architecture—in this case, religious. These kinds of local characteristics have the potential to become strong identity binders when communities become aware of them.

3.2. Chapel of Cartwheels

In the mid-1980s, a strong cultural impulse emerged in Southeast Asia that sought to assert national identities and overcome Western colonizing influence. In our case, it was about creating a climatically appropriate architecture that ended up being called “tropical regionalism” (Cabalfin 2018a, 2018b). Indeed, already in the 1960s, unconventional religious buildings had begun to be seen, temples located in peripheral areas constructed with scarce means and much ingenuity, where the hand of skilled craftsmen could be detected, combining their lack of resources with their mastery of the trade—and even with good humor—to generate exciting spaces that resonated in the popular consciousness, gaining, at the same time, the respect and admiration of professionals.

The Chapel of Cartwheels was built early in that decade by the charismatic priest Guillermo “GG” Gastón at the Santa Rosalia Sugar Estate, which his family owned in Manapla, Negros Occidental. The chapel was built entirely with recycled materials, as an attempt to bring religion closer to the farmers who lived in the factory. Gastón recalled that, one day, the rubber wheels began to replace the wooden ones, which were kept to serve as fuel. In a stroke of inspiration, he thought of using the old wheels to design the chapel he had wanted to build for so long. He sought advice from his brother-in-law, architect Jerry Ascalon, who helped him with the technical details, and the result was a humble chapel that had a rough-hewn charm, almost as if it had been built by the workers themselves.

Beyond the spiritual meanings that Gastón wanted to give to the wheels used as an enclosure, the truth is that, in a climate as hot as that of Negros Occidental, these pieces work perfectly as lattices. In addition, the cover follows a formalization very similar to that of the salakot, the typical conical hat worn by farmers in the Philippine fields, and just like it, contributes to the diffusion of heat. All the pieces of furniture refer to the environment of the surrounding fields: a large stone slab is used as an altar, the benches are simple wooden planks, the decorations simple, and the flowers heliconia stems. Even the small windows of the presbytery were closed with pieces of broken bottles ingeniously arranged as stained glass windows.

The Chapel of Cartwheels belongs to its place and to the wind that blows through it. It gives the impression that it sprang from the earth, like the sugar canes that surround it; it is both impressive and comforting in its rustic majesty and has been celebrated as such (Pérez III 1994; Torres et al. 2018; Veneración 2012; Pacete 2017) (Figure 2).

3.3. Greenbelt Chapel

In the large Philippine cities, there are small places of worship distributed homeopathically throughout the urban weave, chapels that are part of civil or religious institutions or private communities of faithful and that reflect the same climatic values that we have just seen. One of the most popular is the one dedicated to the Holy Child of Peace, located in the business center of Makati.

In 1977, after a trip to New York where she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, businesswoman Fanny del Rosario-Diploma conceived the idea of erecting a building for Catholic worship in the heart of the capital’s financial district as an offering for her healing. In Manhattan, she had visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral, laboriously emerging among the skyscrapers of banking corporations as a spiritual oasis, and she decided to build, in her own city, a chapel that could serve a similar purpose. She thought the expansive park at the Greenbelt shopping center in Legazpi Village would be the perfect site.

After some negotiations, she managed to get the Ayala Group to grant the Santo Niño de Paz Community—established for that purpose—the use of the site for thirty years, with the condition that nothing permanent would be built there. Since the chapel was to be temporary, architects Enrique “Jess” Dizón and Willie Fernández designed a 6 mm thick steel dome covered with wood. Should Grupo Ayala so decide, the chapel could easily be removed by helicopter.1

The space is quite remarkable. The industrial-looking lowered dome, supported on four points, encloses a central space which perimeter opens toward a small pond where ducks and colorful fish swim while, in the garden, several bronze pieces by the National Artist Napoleon Abueva—farmers working the land with their carabaos—add an ethnic touch to the ensemble. The church is always full, both on weekdays and holidays (31 masses are celebrated every week), and the community carries out a wide range of pastoral and welfare activities. The New York intuition of Mrs. Rosario-Diploma proved to be right; in fact, this was the first chapel to be built inside a shopping center, and it can be said that it was a trend-setter (Gálvez 2013; Gómez and Gilles 2014; Layug 2021; Graced, Grateful and Generous Stewardship at Greenbelt Chapel 2024) (Figure 3).

3.4. Church of Mary Immaculate

Of all the open churches built in the Philippines in recent decades, perhaps the church of Mary Immaculate in Las Piñas has been the most applauded. The parish priest, Father Pierino Rogliardi, wanted to take advantage of the fact that the only available lot for the new church was surrounded by a mango plantation, so that the community could celebrate the Eucharist in communion with nature. Francisco “Bobby” Mañosa was able to materialize this novel intuition with the help of the landscaper Linggoy Alvarez.

Inaugurated in 1987, the Nature Church—as it is popularly known—presents an open architecture, without walls, doors, or windows, giving the impression that one is praying in the middle of a beautiful garden. Many elements evoke in the worshipper the presence of the wild nature of the islands. The altar table, for example, is a slab of coral marble with a rough finish resting on two cacahuananche wood pedestals picked from the seashore. Its anahaw roof—the largest in the archipelago until a fire forced its replacement with synthetic pieces—is formed by a network of intricately woven leaves, while a multitude of capiz lamps in the shape of spiraling pigeons provide warm, soft lighting at night. The pavement is a mixture of wood slabs and white pebbles, and the nave’s benches are stumps from trees felled by a typhoon. The branches of an old Sampaloc tree support the image of the Crucified Christ, leaning protectively over the altar area.

In the rock garden, adorned with carabao grass, wild bougainvillea, pakpak lawin, and a collection of cultivated ferns and water lilies, an artificial waterfall cascades down to the feet of the seated image of St. Mary playing with the children and forms a small pond. Mango trees, palms, and other tropical plants serve as a backdrop to the Eucharistic sacrifice and provide privacy for prayer and meditation (Figure 4).

3.5. The Benedictine Monastery of the Transfiguration

The openness of the worship space understood in a broad sense has been an aspiration shared by the best Philippine architects of the second half of the 20th century. Starting from the Rule of St. Benedict, Leandro Locsin wanted to leave in the Benedictine monastery of the Transfiguration (1994–1996)—perhaps the most significant from an architectural point of view among the hundreds of monasteries that currently exist in the country—his personal reading of what a monastery should be in the Philippine islands, both from the points of view of identity and climate.

The chapel is conceived as a celebration space protected by a sloping hipped roof that seems to levitate. This search for levitation—the transfiguration of matter, we could say—is clearly expressed by the position of the structural supports, which are located on the exterior and emerge from the ground, creating a sort of visual continuity with it.

The chapel coincides with the Nature Church in Las Piñas but also with other similar works, such as the Virgen Sang Barangay National Shrine (Chapel of Seashells) or the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Fairmount Hills, Rizal, not only in its link to traditional Filipino houses through its prototypical form but also in its intention to control the interior environment in a passive manner. Locsin had already incorporated vernacular spatial qualities in his previous projects; in this case, despite the use of modern materials, it is still possible to perceive some of the interior of the humble bahay kubo, reinterpreted in a contemporary manner, or perhaps of the ifugao huts found in the far north of the country.

The use of loose chairs instead of the usual continuous pews gives great flexibility of use to this church in the manner of spontaneous outdoor celebrations, while the circulation space running around the perimeter creates a transition zone that, in the monsoon season, can be enclosed with retractable glass partitions to protect from the wind. The architect used to repeat that the Filipino house is always “a space surrounded by space” and “a house that breathes”. For, in the end, every church is nothing but God’s house in the midst of his people (Girard 2018, 2021) (Figure 5).

3.6. St. Mark’s Open Chapel

With St Mark’s Open Chapel (1974–1976), Locsin takes a further step in his search. This paradigmatic chapel, completely open to its surroundings, allows us to connect our discourse with the provisional constructions made for the multitudinous ecclesiastical events that we will see below. In this case, it is a permanent construction, closely related to the boundary crosses or the typical crosses of the Atlantic regions of Europe, such as Ireland, Brittany, or Galicia. Sometimes, these constructions can also be seen in pilgrimage shrines, but they become permanent only in very mild climates.

The chapel is located in the middle of the lush forests of Mount Makiling (Los Baños, Laguna) at the entrance of the National Arts Center, an institution where young people can take courses in visual arts, theater, dance, or music while studying their regular high school subjects. Before reaching the top of the mountain, there is a small garden called Pook Bathala or Place of God, where a concrete cross partially covered with volcanic stone rises and in which mass the silhouette of the crucified Christ is cut out. The pillar supports a cantilevered rectangular slab capable of sheltering a hundred people from the rain and sun. The axis of the slab is open and lets light through a faceted glass cover, directing the view towards the small, somewhat naive image of the Holy Trinity.

Leandro Locsin designed this surprising structure in collaboration with National Artist Vicente Manansala, with whom he had already collaborated on previous occasions. The expressive power of concrete is softened by being in the midst of nature. The pebble pavement, the rustic stone benches with pots at the ends where ferns and other wild plants grow, or the altar, completely surrounded by native vegetation, incorporate vernacular nuances to the whole. Usually, the only acts of worship celebrated here are weddings and baptisms (Figure 6).

3.7. St. Josemaría Escrivá’s Church: Praying from the Car

A very particular derivative of the opening of the Catholic worship space to its surroundings is given in the church of San Josemaría Escrivá, located in Tarlac (2010–2014). The building presents a typologically recognizable appearance, with a classic and careful language, but its most defining feature is its location, as it is located on the edge of a long straight road linking Girona with Carino. The fact that it is usually accessible by car means that the church has some novel aspects from a programmatic and symbolic point of view.

One of the most striking details of the exterior is the large bronze statue of a guardian angel in the corner of the bell tower, which welcomes pilgrims and offers to accompany them on life’s journey (as St. Josemaría liked to remind us), but Alex O. Bautista, the architect, also thought that the faithful could visit the Blessed Sacrament even when the church was closed and without getting out of the car, so he arranged in the apse a small window that allows contemplating the drive-thru tabernacle while a presence sensor activates the lights of the church (Figure 7).

4. Major Religious Events

4.1. Outdoor Worship

So far, we have seen how some permanent buildings show the open character of Christian worship celebrated in contact with nature, but it is above all the temporary buildings that manifest something that twentieth-century theology has been able to make us see that the world is no longer something cursed, “left out of God’s hand”, but a place redeemed by Christ, where the Christian can encounter the Creator in the midst of his daily occupations (Sáenz de Oiza 1952; Fernández-Cobián 2010).

After the Second Vatican Council, a change took place in Christian spirituality that directly affected the way in which liturgical spaces were designed. This mutation consisted of the passage from a fearful spirituality that saw the world as an enemy of religion to an optimistic one deployed in the environment and that understood the world as an opportunity and a mission. The displacement of these theological concepts was immediately translated into a dematerialization of places of worship, especially those used in major ecclesial events. In this sense, the following consideration that, a few months after the closing of the Council and in the context of a multitudinous open-air Mass at the University of Navarre (Spain), it was made by its Grand Chancellor, St. Josemaría Escrivá, is architecturally very significant:

Reflect for a moment on the framework of our Eucharist, of our thanksgiving: we find ourselves in a singular temple; it could be said that the nave is the university campus; the altarpiece, the university library; over there, the machinery that raises new buildings; and above, the sky of Navarre (…) I have constantly taught it with words of Holy Scripture: the world is not evil, because it has come from the hands of God, because it is his creature, because Yahweh looked at it and saw that it was good.

(Escrivá de Balaguer 1969, p. 223)

In our specific case, the opening to the exterior of spaces for Catholic worship is not only a response to purely climatic issues but should also be understood as a sign of identity of the Filipino people, who do not limit themselves to celebrating their faith within the four walls of a temple but have historically used the public space for their religious manifestations and, therefore, as an area of communal affirmation of their national uniqueness.

4.2. Ecclesial Events Between the Wars

During the 20th century, the Philippines hosted many ecclesiastical gatherings that brought together hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in the same space. Evidently, there were no venues of such capacity in the country, and the public space, almost always urban, was the only option available. These gatherings are very intense moments that unite the faithful and create a feeling of collectivity and belonging in which the architecture itself—the orderly arrangement of people in that space—has something to say, regardless of the aesthetic language used at any given moment. We can recall the National Eucharistic Congresses (five between 1929 and 1997), the International Eucharistic Congresses (IEC) of 1937 and 2016, the solemn coronations and consecrations, and even the four papal visits that occurred between 1970 and 2015,2 all events that required the construction of temporary architectures in the form of outdoor altars and their attached outbuildings.

The first of these took place in 1926. The coronation ceremony of the Blessed Virgin of Antipolo began with a fluvial procession along the Pasig River to the breakwaters of Manila Bay and the Luneta promenade, where the crowd recognized Mary Most Holy with the title of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage. This scheme—river procession and concentration at the Luneta—would be repeated on several occasions thereafter. News of the popular success of the Marian event spread throughout the Catholic world, to the point that chronicles suggest that the choice of Manila as the site of the 1937 International Eucharistic Congress may have been motivated by the enthusiasm shown by the Filipino faithful during those days.

In 1929, the first National Eucharistic Congress was held in Manila. Although the main events took place inside the cathedral, the Bishop of Tuguegarao, Constancio Jurgens, officiated an open-air Mass for the youth in the Luneta. The solemn procession of the Blessed Sacrament was attended by an estimated 100,000 people—after which, the consecration of the Filipino people to Christ the King took place (Mulry 1930; Rosales 1956) (Figure 8).

The XXXIII International Eucharistic Congress was held in Manila from 3 to 7 February 1937. It was the first to be held in Asia and constituted a very special moment of pride for the Philippines (at that time, a Commonwealth with the USA), since it somehow placed it on the world Catholic map. After thorough preparation, both spiritually and materially, the country welcomed 1.5 million Catholic pilgrims from all over the world. The congress included a night procession of 600,000 faithful, although the main events were held at the Luneta, where Juan Felipe de Jesús Nakpil built an elaborate altar by placing the attendees in radial sectors arranged in a circle. He also designed the Eucharistic monument, a slender art deco structure composed of three supports topped by a circular beam and a dome that protected the Blessed Sacrament; the columns were decorated with human figures in prayer that served as stylized capitals (Daily 1937; Repetti 1937; Aubert 1965) (Figure 9).

4.3. The Major Post-War Religious Events

During World War II, Manila was completely razed to the ground. In 1946, on the occasion of the commemorative events to celebrate the country’s independence from the United States, architect Juan Arellano built the Quirino Grandstand on the promenade. Three years later, Federico Ilustre was commissioned to relocate it to the Luneta, now permanently and without some of the elements that ornamented the original structure. The building was completed just in time for the newly elected president Elpidio Quirino to inaugurate it. Since then, this long grandstand open to the large city esplanade has witnessed a multitude of events of all kinds, especially religious.

From an ecclesial point of view, the two decades between 1945 and 1965 were marked by the resistance of the Catholic Church to the anti-clericalism of Freemasonry, especially in matters related to education and customs. However, several events showed that religion continued to maintain a great strength in the country: the II National Marian Congress, Manila (1954), the creation in Rome of the Pontifical Collegio-Seminary Filippino (1959), and the celebration in Cebu of the fourth centenary of the Christianization of the Philippines (1965). Each of these events was supported by an architectural action.

The Second National Marian Congress was planned as a great public manifestation of the Catholic faith within the Marian Year that Pope Pius XII had convoked with universal character to celebrate the centenary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. On the last day of the congress (5 December), Cardinal Fernando Quiroga Palacios, Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, celebrated a multitudinous Mass in the Luneta as papal legate for the event. He then blessed the first stone of the reconstruction works of the cathedral (Fernando Hizon Ocampo Sr., 1954–1958), as well as the Chapel of the Holy Guardian Angels at the Ateneo de Manila High School (Cesar Homero Concio, 1951–1956). The patriotic character of the event was enhanced by the procession of thirty-three images of Our Lady that arrived in Manila from various parts of the Philippines, attended by more than a million people. Pius XII addressed a colorful radio message to those present (Pius XII 1954), and after the blessing with the Blessed Sacrament, the president of the nation, Ramon Magsaysay, consecrated the Philippines to Mary Immaculate.

Taking advantage of the wake of the Marian Year, a Second National Eucharistic Congress (1956) was held a few months later. At the Santa Isabel College on Taft Avenue in Ermita, a huge neon sign, two meters long by four meters high, announced to Manileños the proximity of the event; above the letters was a large silhouette of the Sacred Heart outlined in red neon. Meanwhile, at the new Diliman campus of the University of the Philippines, Leandro Locsin and Chaplain John P. Delaney were struggling to finish the Holy Sacrifice Chapel on time (Zóbel de Ayala 1957).

The most significant event for our purposes, however, was the construction of the provisional altar that Juan Nakpil erected on the inevitable Paseo de la Luneta. Since it was not possible to establish the budget that was available—since the funds from parish donations called One-Peso Offerings would not begin to arrive until after the event—the architect had to take advantage of the Quirino Grandstand and, with the limited means at his disposal, add an altar where he could accommodate all the members of the Philippine ecclesiastical hierarchy, plus the visiting dignitaries, the Cardinal Legate and his entourage and the president of the nation. In its final form, the altar was marked by a huge figure of Jesus Christ with his heart exposed. Although the surviving images do not allow us to appreciate the details, according to the chronicles of the time, “Nakpil and the contractor Mariano Sideco were able to satisfy all the liturgical requirements, and the altar, built at minimal cost, was an inspiring spectacle” (Verceles 1957, p. 466) (Figure 10).

As a token of Spain’s closeness to the Philippines, General Francisco Franco offered as a gift the Eucharistic monstrance that was used in the closing procession, which was attended by more than a million faithful. At the end, Pope Pius XII was heard through the loudspeakers imparting his blessing:

You have transformed your Luneta, so to speak, into a vast living ostensory, and Manila Bay resounds with the perennial plea of Mother Church to her divine Founder and Sustainer: O Victim, who has saved us and reopened the gate of Heaven, the struggle is fierce: be thou our strength, grant us thy help!

(Cullum 1957)

On the same day, 2 December 1956, President Ramon Magsaysay consecrated the Filipino people to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

4.4. Papal Visits

Fourteen years later, a pope landed in the Philippines on 27 November 1970. The enthusiasm of the Filipinos was overwhelming. During his three-day stay on “Pinoy” soil as part of a pilgrimage to East Asia, Oceania, and Australia (25 November–5 December 1970), Paul VI visited a good part of the islands and was even the target of a failed assassination attempt. In addition to numerous mass meetings, on the 28th, he celebrated Mass at the old Luneta Promenade, which, in 1967, had been renamed Rizal Park, and the following day, another Mass at the Quezon Memorial Circle. I have not been able to find out the name of the architect who was in charge of building the papal altars, which are markedly classical in style (Paul VI 1970; Vatican News 2020) (Figure 11).

John Paul II traveled to the Philippines twice. The first time was in February 1981 as part of his first pastoral visit to the Far East.3 The Supreme Pontiff made a very complete tour of the country, and in addition to Manila, he visited Cebu, Davao, Bacolod, Iloilo, Legazpi, Baguio, and Morong. The pope officiated his first mass on Philippine soil at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Manila, but the central event of the trip was the beatification of Lorenzo Ruiz and his fellow martyrs, who had been killed in Japan during the persecutions of the 17th century. It was an unusual event, as it was the first beatification to take place far from the Vatican. The design of the altar in Rizal Park was the work of José María Zaragoza, while Bobby Mañosa designed an ethnic processional carriage to replace the then customary armored popemobile. Years later, Mañosa would have the opportunity to create the spectacular spire that served as the stage for the IV National Eucharistic Congress of 1987 (Caruncho 2003) (Figure 12 and Figure 13).

John Paul II visited the country again on the occasion of the 10th World Youth Day (Manila, 10–15 January 1995). Once again, it was Bobby Mañosa who was in charge of designing the altar attached to the Quirino Grandstand for the closing Mass held at Rizal Park—up to that date, the largest human concentration in history, gathering some 6 million people (Figure 14). This was the Polish pope’s last stay in the Philippines, as his scheduled trip for the 2003 World Meeting of Families was cancelled due to an advanced stage of Parkinson’s disease from which he was suffering.

On 30 November 2012, the National Mass of Thanksgiving for the canonization of St. Peter Calungsod, who, a few days earlier, had been raised to the altars by Benedict XVI in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, was held in Cebu City.4 The ceremony was attended by thousands of people, including the President of the Republic, Benigno Aquino III. The ceremony began with a fluvial procession; then, the image of the new saint was carried to the colorful baldachin that the architect Ramon Vios had built for the occasion. The event lasted well into the night, and according to the chronicles of the time, the festive and vibrant architectural illumination not only enhanced the Eucharistic celebration but also served to pay homage to the country’s second native saint (Figure 15).

Twenty years after the last stay of John Paul II, Pope Francis traveled to the islands. On 16 January 2015, he celebrated Mass in the Manila Cathedral, which, between 2012 and 2014, had been closed while some works were undertaken to prevent future earthquakes. On the 18th, seven million faithful attended the Eucharist in Rizal Park, where architect and priest Alex O. Bautista had once again intervened in the Quirino Tribune (Figure 16).

To date, the last major ecclesial event to be held in the Philippines was the 51st International Eucharistic Congress (Cebu, 24–31 January 2016). The opening ceremony was attended by nearly one million people and used the same abstract baldachin that, four years earlier, had hosted the canonization of St. Peter Calungsod. The most impressive episode was the evening candlelight procession, in which two million people walked from the Provincial Capital to Independence Square—around five kilometers—adoring the Blessed Sacrament exposed in a magnificent Eucharistic monstrance (Figure 17).

5. EDSA Shrine: Architecture as a Civic and Religious Space

Before concluding, I would like to refer to the role that open architecture can play as a civic and religious space at the same time, which, in the Philippines, is embodied in the unique shrine of Our Lady of Peace. Designed by Francisco “Bobby” Mañosa in 1986 and completed posthumously in 2021, the also called EDSA Shrine is located at one of the corners of the complex road junction formed by EDSA and Ortigas Avenues and which strategic location makes it a popular urban landmark. It was a commemorative monument that marked the beginning of the democratic era in the Philippines, a civic–religious shrine that reminds Filipinos of the intercession of Our Lady so that the citizen revolution that ousted Ferdinand Marcos from power would take place in a peaceful manner, and a symbolic building that evidences an intense civic vocation and, ultimately, the Filipino people’s desire to link religion with public space.

Mañosa’s first version for the memorial showed an enclosed basilica with the appearance of a large bahay kubo, with seven sloping, clustered roofs framing a statue of the Virgin resting on the ground (Figure 18). But this first project was not to the liking of the managing committee, so the architect proposed as an alternative a “town square”, an architectural promenade with Mary as the focal point, completed with a subway space dedicated to worship. Finally, the project was configured as a podium formed by three oblong hexagonal enclosures that house a small church that serves as a base for the sculpture (Mañosa 2017).

Several events surrounded the construction of this building. Perhaps the strangest was the entrenchment of a group of soldiers who made themselves strongholds there during the attempted coup d’état in November 1989, a few days before its inauguration. When they surrendered a week later, the sanctuary could be consecrated amidst the grim aftermath of the coup.

In addition to serving as a meeting point for various citizen demonstrations, every year, a mass Eucharist is held in its atrium to commemorate the People Power Revolution, among the various works of art that symbolize the spirit of freedom and peace of the Philippine nation. At one end is the Flame of Freedom, a sculpture by Manny Casal depicting three men carrying a cauldron on their shoulders, while scattered around the town square are the fourteen Stations of the Cross, cast in bronze by Napoleon Abueva. The sanctuary is presided over by a monumental image of Our Lady, Queen of Peace (Virginia Ty-Navarro), which, although it has an undoubted urban presence, is unable to compete with the lure of the large billboards behind it. In 2019, the ensemble was declared Important Cultural Property (Figure 19 and Figure 20).

6. Results

We have seen how different types of religious architecture, very different from each other, share a common characteristic: their openness to the outside. The examples presented here do not in any way imply that there are no completely closed churches in the Philippines; security or environmental reasons may make this advisable. Consider, for example, the case of Baguio City, the summer capital built by the Americans at the beginning of the 20th century because of its cooler climate than Manila.

The resources that Filipino architects have used to achieve this openness are varied. First, a confined space can be conceived as conceptually open, as if it were a cage or an aviary; this is the case of the anonymous church in Taytay or the Chapel of Cartwheels in Manapla. It can also be a space that is only partially enclosed, with wide openings that are well designed to generate air flows, as in Greenbelt or the Monastery of the Transfiguration, or just simple visual openings, as in Gerona. In the most extreme cases (Nature Church or St. Mark’s), the architect barely encloses the space with a roof, as if it were a communal sakalot that protects from the sun but allows nature—the air, the plants, the remains of the tides thrown on the beach—to freely form part of the divine worship.

Logically, everything is pushed to the limit at major religious events. In these events, openness is a basic requirement, and the architect must make a virtue out of necessity, but in the case of the Philippines, the very high participation of the faithful in them allows us to suspect that the exterior configuration of the worship space responds to the Pinoy way of living religiosity. The Shrine of Our Lady of Peace (EDSA Shrine) would then seem to be the permanent materialization of this community spirit.

Throughout our tour—provocatively and poetically called “cartography”—we have been able to detect an intense vindictive aroma: the aspiration for a regional—we could even say national—architecture, in which the communion of interior space with the exterior environment emerges as something proper to the Filipino character, almost as a vital necessity, and so it seems to emerge from some of Bobby Mañosa’s statements or from the CBCP document (1999).

7. Conclusions

Any architecture is always the result of a complex interaction between the natural conditions of a country and the way of life of its people. The territory imposes its geography and climate and the people their history and customs. In the case of the Philippines, its insularity and location within the Pacific Ring of Fire has made any form of construction a continuous struggle against high temperatures, typhoons, volcanoes, and earthquakes. This situation of chronic vulnerability has conditioned the architecture of the islands, generating community buildings that are usually compact and massive but always ventilated. At the same time—perhaps as a strategy to ward off fear—the interiors are filled with color by means of plastic applications, which degree of quality depends on the cultural level of the clients, ranging from the usual naive or kitsch decorations to the interventions of great national artists.

The characteristics of the country and its people—simplicity, cheerfulness, resilience, religiosity, etc.—are reflected in the architecture intended for Catholic worship, whether permanent or temporary, giving it unique qualities. Filipino people enjoy living outdoors, so even religious buildings are never totally enclosed, often opening up to the landscape and seeking contact with nature, but they also like to manifest their faith in public. Perhaps that is why the large church events held on the islands over the past few decades have been among the largest in history.