Basilica Minore del Santo Niño
In 1521 the explorer Ferdinand Magellan reached Cebu, and the queen of the island, baptized with the name Juana, received from him a small statue of the Child Jesus. Forty-four years later, in 1565, when the Spanish expedition of Miguel López de Legazpi came to Cebu, a soldier found the statue unharmed in a burned house. A church was built on the spot. It was the first in the Philippines, and the beginning of the faith that has made the islands the largest Catholic nation in Asia.
The present stone church was built in the 1730s. Pope Paul VI made it a minor basilica in 1965, for the four hundredth anniversary of the finding. The image, dressed in royal robes, is kept behind glass in a chapel beside the altar, and pilgrims queue all day to pray before it.
On the third Sunday of January the feast of the Santo Niño is celebrated with the Sinulog festival, which draws huge crowds to the city with prayer, processions and dancing. An earthquake in 2013 badly damaged the bell tower, which has since been restored.
- Built
- Founded 1565; present church 1735–1739
- Style
- Baroque (Spanish colonial)
- Where
- Cebu City, Philippines
- Map
- Find it on OpenStreetMap