The Archdiocese of Manila launched a mobile app that would serve as a guide for the faithful on the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Christianity in the country.
“In celebration today of the 426th anniversary of the elevation of Manila as an archdiocese, we are launching the 500 YOC Mission App,” read a statement posted on Radio Veritas 846.
“This is a complete resource for the 500 Years of Christianity Jubilee churches in the Archdiocese of Manila,” it said.
The 500 YOC Mission App features the different Jubilee churches in the Archdiocese of Manila with the schedule of Holy Masses, confession, devotional prayers, and other liturgical services.
It also contains information on the plenary indulgence and other important information as the Philippines marks the 500 Years of Christianity from April 4, 2021 to April 18, 2022.
More than 500 churches around the country have been designated as pilgrim churches where visitors may gain a plenary indulgence. Twelve of these jubilee churches are in the Archdiocese of Manila.
In a pastoral statement released early this year, the country’s Catholic bishops reminded Filipinos that the Christian faith is “a gift from God and not from Spain.”
Christianity had succeeded in “taking root on the fertile ground of our innate spirituality as a people, with our own unique gifts and charisma from the one Spirit that we received at baptism,” read the bishops’ statement.
The pastoral letter invited the faithful to make this year “a year of looking back in history so that we can understand better who we are in the present as communities of disciples.”
He also urged everyone to make the occasion “an opportunity … to look forward in the next 500 years with the same missionary zeal that made it possible for us to receive the Christian faith.”
Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who traveled under the banner of Spain, landed in the Philippines on March 16, 1521. The first documented celebration of the Holy Eucharist in the archipelago was held on March 31, 1521, Easter Sunday.
