Señor Santo Niño de Cebu

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About Señor Santo Niño de Cebu

VIVA! PIT SEÑOR!

The group aims to inculcate among its members, Devotion to Jesus Christ in whose childhood we honor in the image of Señor Santo Niño de Cebu, the first and oldest religious Image to be shipped here in our Islands.

This group would also serve as a source of information of the activities straight from the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño de Cebu.

SEÑOR SANTO NIÑO DE CEBU
(By Trizer Dale Mansueto / Isaacdos)

After dinner the priest and some of the others went ashore to baptize the queen, who came with forty women. We conducted her to her to the platform and she was made to sit down upon a cushion… until the priest should be ready. She was shown an image of our lady, a very beautiful wooden child Jesus and a cross. Thereupon she was overcome with contrition, and asked baptism amid her tears. We named her Johanna.” This was eye the witness account of Antonio de Pigafetta, the chronicler of Magellan’s expedition on what happened on April 14, 1521 during which the queen of Cebu was baptized. On the same day, about 800 Cebuanos also received baptism. Later, “(the queen) asked us to give her the little child Jesus to keep in place of her idols.” This occasion was the first manifestation of the Santo Niño among the Cebuanos.

Forty-four years later, the Spaniards came back to Cebu. Led by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, the Spaniards were now determined to re-claim the islands. The Cebuanos fought back but Legazpi and his men used force to quell opposition. The native village was set on fire and after the smoke cleared, a soldier named Juan de Camuz “…found a marvelous thing, namely, a child Jesus like those of Flanders, in its little pine cradle and its little loose shirt, such as come from those parts, and a little velvet hat, like those of Flanders – and all so well-preserved that only the little cross, which is generally upon the globe that he holds in his hands, was missing.”

Legazpi fell on his knees and kissed the image with reverently. He took this as a sign that the heavens will bless the Spanish endeavor. There and then, “he ordered that this sacred image be placed with all reverence in the first church that should be founded, and that the church be called Nombre de Jesus (Name of Jesus).” The adelantado Legazpi then said: “Cebu shall henceforth be called the Sion of the Philippine Islands, and the divine influence of Christianity shall go forth from Cebu to every part of the archipelago, and across the seas to distant shores.” This happened on April 28, 1565.

The Santo Niño continues to be the most venerated image in the entire archipelago so that no house in Catholic Philippines today, no matter how opulent or downtrodden, doesn’t have an image of their beloved Little King.



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