Sulat was founded in 1650.  The town was under the Palapag residence.  Little is known about this place, until it is mentioned that in 1768 Sulat was ceded to the Franciscans who assigned Fray Melchor Chaves as its pastor.   As of 1884, according to Redondo the oldest parish book was dated to 1773.  In 1884, the church was repaired by the Franciscan Fray Enrique de Barcelona, who also constructed a new bell tower, a beautiful baptistry, and a cemetery surrounded by a wall of stone outside the town limits. The same friar constructed the tribunal of wood and a school of the same material.

Heritage Sites: Huerta attributes the church to the Jesuits: “The church, dedicated to St. Ignatius Loyola, is of stone, constructed by the Jesuits.” Its date of construction is uncertain.

According to tradition, Fray Enrique built the bell tower on a circular bulwark to the gospel side of the church. The date for the construction of the square fort surrounding the church is unknown. But the fort appears in Saderra Masó’s list of Jesuit-built fortifications. The fort completely surrounds three sides ending at the façade, which formed part of the fortification. A circular bulwark stands at the northeast corner of the fort and a squarish one at the opposite corner. A ramp leads to a wide platform at the northern side of the fort. A short span of wall and a flight of steps stand parallel to the wall. Tradition says the walls belonged to the old covento.

The church itself, a cruciform, was greatly damaged by war. Its rear wall and gospel transept is of new construction. A new façade has replaced the old one, and a modern bell tower stands at the epistle side of the church and not on the bulwark as Fray Enrique had it. Much of the church wall has been razed to give room for ample doors that lead to newly constructed arcades. The gospel transept seems to be from Jesuit times. Except for a rotund image of St. Ignatius, nothing of the old altar remains. Of the Franciscan altars, one wooden frontal with rococo designs can still be found.

Because of its style, the rotund St. Ignatius suggests that it is from Jesuit times. A similar rotund image was given in 1931 to the Jesuits by the Antipolo parish priest, Fr. Gamero. The image belonged to the Antipolo parish. Both the Sulat and Antipolo statues bear typical marks of 18th-century statuary; namely, the formal and rigid pose, the well-ordered drapery caught at the waist by a narrow ribbon and tied in a bow at the front, large penetrating eyes and proportions out of synch with the classical mode.