OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY

Day 343: April 21

Our Lady of the Rosary of Manaoag, Manaoag, Pangasinan, Philippines



The shrine of Manaoag, built as a result of an apparition, is located about 200 km north of Manila. Here we find an ivory image of Our Lady of the Rosary from the 16th century, particularly venerated by the Filipino faithful.

Pope Pius XI crowned the image on April 21, 1926, while Benedict XVI canonically approved the granting of a "special bond of spiritual affinity in perpetuity," through which pilgrims will have the guarantee of the same blessings and the right to a plenary indulgence equal to that received when visiting Rome's papal basilica of St Mary Major.

Tradition has it that the name given to the city of Manaoag derives from the verb mantaoag, which means "to call". And indeed here the Blessed Virgin appeared calling a peasant.

The statue of Our Lady of Manaoag is a 17th-century ivory image of the Virgin Mary with the Child Jesus placed on the main altar of the Basilica. It was brought to the Philippines from Spain via a galleon, in the early 17th century by the priest Juan de San Jacinto.

Records dating back to 1610 attest that a middle-aged farmer was walking home, when he heard a mysterious female voice. He looked around and saw on the tops of the trees, as in a veiled cloud, the Virgin Mary, with a rosary in her right hand and the Child Jesus on her left arm, all bathed in a heavenly glow. Our Lady showed the farmer where she wanted a church to be built. Thus it was there that a first chapel was built on the hill of the apparition and this became the nucleus of the current city.

A copy of Our Lady of the Rosary of Manaoag is made to stay for a few days in the various parishes of the Philippines so that everyone can venerate it. The image of Our Lady of Manaoag and her crown and jewels are considered priceless objects. Precisely because of their great value, there have been several theft attempts. Many of its gold crowns and various precious objects donated by local and foreign faithful are kept at the Sanctuary museum.

The image of Our Lady of Manaoag is protected by bulletproof glass above the high altar. The coat of arms of the Dominicans is a demonstration of the Order's devotion to her. The archdiocese, in keeping with the Filipino custom of venerating an image by touching its body or clothing, has built a staircase leading to a chamber with pews behind the image. Devotees can kneel in front of the small glass window to pray and touch the hem of their cloak, dropping prayers into a box near the Virgin Mary Statue.

Some of the miracles attributed to Our Lady of Manaoag are depicted in wall paintings inside the church, in the transepts and on the nave.

The Augustinians built the first chapel of St Monica (Manaoag's original name) in 1600. The first Dominican priest to work in the Manaoag mission was Juan de San Jacinto, the first curate of Mangaldan. It was not until 1608 that the Mangaldan mission was formally accepted by the Dominican Provincial Chapter.

Numerous threats from the Igorot tribes of the surrounding mountains have led to the relocation of the entire community to the hill. It was the Dominicans who built a large church in 1701 where the current basilica stands today, thanks to donations from a wealthy family from Manila who had moved to Lingayen. There was a great expansion of the church in 1882 and then it collapsed largely due to the earthquake of 1892.

During the turmoil of the Philippine revolution for independence from Spain, the revolutionaries set fire to the church on May 10, 1898 and many treasures were destroyed, but the statue of the Virgin escaped destruction, it was in fact found abandoned at the back of the church.

The Dominicans returned in 1901 and again the church regained its former glory. In 1925 the spiritual administration of the shrine was granted in perpetuity to the Order of Preachers. With the Second World War it managed to survive a terrible Japanese bombing. A bomb had even fallen inside the sanctuary, but miraculously it did not explode.

In February 2015, the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary in Manaoag was elevated to a minor basilica in a ceremony attended by more than 100 archbishops and bishops, church and state leaders, and numerous devotees. The Shrine was thus definitively named the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Manaoag.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"O queen, mother and teacher of the apostles, receive in sovereignty and in anticipation the divine mandate to go to the souls, with the divine power of sanctification."

(Justin Russolillo, Devotional, Vocationist Editions, Pianura, 2009, p. 163)

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