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Region 7: Central Visayas ••• Northern Cebu Mandaue 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,
60 x 20 yards for the principal nave and 20 x 8 yards 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.
Heritage
sites: The
present Bantayan church is 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. The Bantayan sa Hari (watchtower) or watchtower figures prominently
in the seal of Manduae City.
Ironically the Bantayan after which it was modeled was neglected
for a long time because of the Manduae-Mactan Bridge. What was a prominent historical landmark was subsumed by the
colossal bridge, as the tower stood near the Mandaue approach to
the bridge. The watchtower,
attributed to the Recollects and built probably in the 19th
century was surrounded by factories and shanties.
Recently cleaned and covered with a layer of cement and the
surrounding areas also cleaned, this circular tower of coral rubble
and mortar can now be better appreciated.
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