Augustinian Recollect Province of Saint Ezequiél Moreno
Today, the Provincialate House is located at the San Nicolas De Tolentino Parish Church on Neptune Street, Congressional Subdivision, Project 6, Quezon City.
Just 17 years after the Recollection was formed in the Chapter of Toledo, 10 priests and 4 consecrated brothers sailed to the Philippines in order to heed the request of the Archbishop of Manila to help in the Christianization of the islands.
Together with the Augustinians (who arrived first in 1575), the discalced Franciscans (1578), the Jesuits (1581) and the Dominicans (1587), they performed the task of not only Christianizing the Philippines but also to lay the foundations of many of its modern-day towns and cities.
The first Recollect mission to the Philippines was led by no less than the very first Prior Provincial Fray Juan de San Jerónimo.
Though they first set foot on the island of Cebu in 1606, the Recoletos built their first priory in the same year in Bagumbayan outside the walls of the present-day Intramuros.
The Recollect missionaries from Mexico brought along with them the image of Nuestra Señora de la Salud which, according to Fr.
Rommel L. Rubia, “was a precious gift from the Discalced (Barefoot) Carmelite nuns of Mexico to the Recollect missionaries on their way to their missions in the Philippines”.
In 1712, the Governor-General Martin Ursua y Arizmendi, ordered the establishment of the towns along Pampanga - Pangasinan route to secure travelers from Aeta and Zambal raids.
Incidentally, in the same year, the spiritual administration of the Zambales was restored to the Augustinian Recollects after a prolonged dispute with the Dominicans.
The opposition of the other religious orders against an autonomous diocesan clergy independent of them (With the possible exception of the Recollects and Jesuits) lead to the martyrdom of Filipino Diocesan priests Mariano Gomez, José Burgos, Jacinto Zamora collectively known as Gomburza who were wrongly implicated in the Cavite Mutiny, since the Spanish feared that because a priest, Rev.
[7] Furthermore, the Governor General who was a Freemason, Rafael Izquierdo y Gutiérrez upon discovering the Cavite Mutiny was led by fellow Freemasons: Maximo Innocencio, Crisanto de los Reyes, and Enrique Paraiso; the Governor-General as per his Masonic vow to protect fellow brothers of the Craft, shifted the blame to Gomburza since they had inspired ethnic pride among Filipinos due to their campaign for reform.
[7] The Governor-General asked the Catholic hierarchy in the person of Archbishop of Manila Gregorio Meliton Martinez to have them declared as heretics and defrocked but he refused as he believed in Gomburza's innocence.
[7] This inspired the Jesuit educated and future National Hero Jose Rizal to form the La Liga Filipina, to ask for reforms from Spain and recognition of local clergy.
By 1898, the year that the Filipinos declared independence from Spain, the Recollects were attending to about 1,203,399 souls in 203 towns and 20 provinces in the Philippines.
Given that the Spanish dominions over the Pacific were under the management of the Captaincy General of the Philippines, the province also sent missions to some of the islands of the Marianas.
It is one of the active congregations belonging to the Augustinian Recollects family and a fruit brought forth out of the missionary zeal of the Order.
They directed the Beaterio from its earlier stage of growth and development until it was canonically erected as a diocesan religious congregation on 19 August 1929 through the recommendation of the Reverend Father Gerardo Larrondo, the incumbent Prior General of the Recollect Friars; and through the benevolence of the Most Reverend Michael O'Doherty, then, Archbishop of Manila.
Founded as early as the 1650s in the town of Bolinao, Pangasinan, these pious men and women share in the charism of the Recoletos in their daily lives.
Aside from this wondrous saint, the Secular Augustinian Recollect was also blessed with other heroic people like Calara Calima and Isabel.
