Once standing seven-storeys high at its peak, or the equivalent of between 18 and 24 meters (59 and 79 ft), it was buried by a combination of accumulated volcanic ash from the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo and subsequent lahar mud that started flowing into Bacolor in 1995, the fourth year of many intermittent lahar flows inside Pampanga province after the Pinatubo eruption.

[1][4] Once known simply as the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes of Cabetican, it was built in 1985 in the austere Brutalist style by engineer Julito D. Macapagal, Sr and seven hitherto unnamed architects to house the image of Our Lady of Lourdes that was dedicated to the municipality in 1901; the image was previously housed in a modest bamboo chapel.

Out of Print magazine referred to the shrine's original and even present Brutalist image as something that would "better fit along Roxas Boulevard than MacArthur Highway" in Bacolor.

[1] In 1995, the lahar flow that entered Bacolor submerged the town in lahar mud, mostly between three to six meters (9.8 to 19.7 ft) thick, but burying even tall structures in the town's lower parts like the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes of Cabetican and Bacolor's famous San Guillermo Parish Church, which latter is a mere fifteen-minute walk from the shrine.

Furthermore, excavating deeper in a barangay the ground level of which was now higher than previously would risk flooding the church further during the monsoon season.