"First Mass" in Limasawa: Fact or opinion?

Written by Buddy Gomez on August 17, 2019

        That "First Mass" celebrated on Philippine soil was neither in Agusan nor
Southern Leyte.
        Was the Mass on Easter Sunday ever celebrated without first observing Palm
Sunday, which was a week before it?
        Let us establish a chronology to resolve an argument over geography. Magellan
came to Homonhon before Limasawa. The  National Historical Institute's (NHI)
concluded that "the first-ever Christian mass on Philippine soil on March 31, 1521,
was celebrated in the island of Limasawa." It is a conclusion the NHI reached after a
"rigorous evaluative analysis and appraisal of primary sources" of the chronicles of
Antonio Pigafetta, which is "the most complete and reliable account of Magellan's
expedition."
        Pigafetta (English translation from Blair & Robertson) wrote the following: "Early
on the morning of Sunday, the last of March and Easter day, the Captain-General
sent the priest with some men to prepare the place where mass was to be said."
Indeed, it was the first mention of Mass being celebrated since arriving in the islands
they had just named "the archipelago of San Lazaro." However, Pigafetta never
claimed that Limasawa Easter Sunday mass was the first that was held in the
Philippines as we were taught in our grade school Philippine History.
        A few noted historians now no longer refer to the Limasawa mass as the first
Mass held in the country. However, they referred to it as the first “recorded” Mass in
the Philippines. Hence, the first Mass may have been unrecorded, but historians did
not officially affirm this theory. The 500th Anniversary of that March 31, 2021 event
should have been referred to as the "Easter Sunday Mass" at Limasawa.
        How this supposed error came to be and who might have caused and
perpetuated it do not seem to be of any importance anymore. When this error is
pointed out, correction by concerned authorities must be in order. However, this
phenomenon would pose an academic challenge as a subject for a master's degree
thesis on a historical "whodunnit!"
        The voyage of Magellan from San Lucar de Barrameda to "the archipelago of San
Lazaro" spanned for one year, six months, and a couple of weeks. It would be
preposterous to conclude that no other masses were held before that in Limasawa
and even claimed it as the Philippines' first-ever Mass because it was unrecorded or
Pigafetta failed to record it. After all, masses occur with regularity every Sunday.
        Between Magellan's voyage up to their arrival in Zubu (Cebu), Pigafetta only
recorded five masses being held. Hence, other masses must have been held
throughout the voyage, but Pigafetta must have also failed to record them. We also
have to consider that Magellan's crew is composed of three priests.
        While along the coast of Verzin (Brazil), Pigafetta wrote the following: "mass was
said twice onshore, during which those people (natives) remained on their knees." In
the Patagonian port of San Julian, he wrote the following: "April 1 (1520) Palm
Sunday, Magallanes summoned all his captains, officers, and pilots, to go ashore to
hear mass…." The fourth instance was when they were in Limasawa, and the fifth
was when they reached Zubu.
        However, Magellan anchored and stayed in Humunu (Homonhon) for eight days,
from Sunday to Sunday, departing on March 25, 1521. After months of floating in the
Pacific seas, they finally landed on a Sunday. Pigafetta did not record anything on this
day. He also did not record their second Sunday in Homonhon, which was Palm
Sunday.
        While in the port of San Julian, Pigafetta recorded a mass on Palm Sunday, which
fell on April 1, 1520 (a year earlier), but he did not mention holding a mass on Easter
Sunday. Pigafetta mentioned the Easter Sunday mass in Limasawa but did not record
Palm Sunday on their last full day in Homonhon.
        Was Easter Sunday mass ever celebrated without observing Palm Sunday? Or
was Palm Sunday observed without a mass on Easter Sunday?
Here is the chronology from Pigafetta's memoirs:

"At dawn on Saturday, March 16, 1521, (feast of St. Lazarus) we came upon a
highland at a distance… an island named Zamal (Samar)… the following day (March
17, Sunday) the captain-general desired to land on another island (Humunu)…
uninhabited… to be more secure and to get water and have some rest. He had two
tents set up on shore for the sick."

"On Monday, March 18, we saw a boat coming towards us with nine men in it. This
marks our first human contact with Europeans, giving signs of joy because of our
arrival… At noon on Friday, March 22, those men came as they had promised."

"And we lay eight days in that place, where the captain every day visited the sick
men who he had put ashore on the island to recover."

        The masses recorded by Pigafetta had two things in common: they were both
observed onshore with the presence of the natives.
        Homonhon, which is a barangay of the Municipality of Guiuan in Eastern Samar,
may have been neglected as the true venue of the first Sunday mass in the
Philippines, which may have occurred either on March 17, 1521 or March 24, 1521
(Palm Sunday), possibly due to failure in historiographic interpretation.
Pedro Valderrama on March 31, 1521 (Easter Sunday) in the Island of Limasawa,
Southern Leyte.The first Catholic mass in the Philippines was on Easter Sunday of
March 31, 1521 officiated by Father Pedro de Valderrama in the shore of a town islet
named as Limasawa in the tip of Southern Leyte. Limasawa is dubbed as the
birthplace of Roman Catholicism in the Philippines. Landing on Philippine
shores: When Ferdinand Magellan and his European crew sailed from San Lucar de
Barrameda for an expedition to search for spices, these folks landed on the
Philippines after their voyage from other proximate areas. On March 28, 1521, while
at sea, they saw a bonfire which turned out to be Limasawa where they anchored.

The island’s sovereign ruler was Rajah Siaiu. When Magellan and comrades set foot
on the grounds of Limasawa, he befriended the Rajah together with his brother
Rajah Kulambu of Butuan. In those days, it was customary among the indigenous—
and in most of southeast Asia—to seal friendship with a blood compact. On
instigation of Magellan who had heard the Malayan term for it, casi casi, the new
friends performed the ritual. This was the first recorded blood compact between
Filipinos and Spaniards. Gifts were exchanged by the two parties when the
celebration had ended. On March 31, 1521, an Easter Sunday, Magellan ordered a
mass to be celebrated which was officiated by Father Pedro Valderrama, the
Andalusion chaplain of the fleet, the only priest then. Conducted near the shores of
the island, the Holy First Mass marked the birth of Roman Catholicism in the
Philippines. Colambu and Siaiu were the first natives of the archipelago, which was
not yet named “Philippines” until the expedition of Ruy Lopez de Villalobos in 1543,
to attend the mass among other native inhabitants.

In the afternoon of the same day, Magellan instructed his comrades to plant a large
wooden cross on the top of the hill overlooking the sea. Magellan’s chronicler,
Antonio Pigafetta, who recorded the event said: “After the Cross was erected in
position, each of us repeated a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria, and adored the
Cross; and the kings [Colambu and Siaiu] did the same.” Magellan then took
ownership of the islands where he had landed in the name of King Charles V which
he had named earlier on March 16 “Archipelago of Saint Lazarus” because it was the
day of the saint when the Armada reached the archipelago.

On June 19, 1960, Republic Act No. 2733, called the Limasawa Law, was enacted
without being signed by the President of the Philippines. The legislative fiat declared
The site in Magallanes, 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 birth of Christianity in the Philippine). Magallanes is east of the
island of Limasawa. In 1984 Imelda 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.”
Dr. Gregorio Zaide and his daughter, Sonia, in several editions during the 1980s of
their widely-disseminated history textbook, insisted that the recorded First Mass was
held in Masao, Butuan