San Miguel Church has around 1,500 regular parishioners, some of whom are descended from old, rich families in the district.[3] It is also notably the only Catholic church in the country where priests (instead of bishops) have canonical dispensation to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation twice a week.[3]
San Miguel Church was first built in stone in 1603 by the Jesuits in Paco, Manila (formerly known as Dilao). In the 17th and early 18th centuries, the number of Japanese expatriates in that area grew, and they established a community.[5] In 1611, the Jesuits and Filipino Catholics accommodated Japanese Christian refugees from persecution by the Tokugawa Shogunate.[6]
On May 1, 1954, Ilocos Norterepresentative and later President Ferdinand E. Marcos married beauty queen Imelda Romuáldez in the shrine (at the time still Manila’s pro-cathedral). Their wedding, which followed almost two weeks of courtship, was tagged as the Wedding of the Year, with President Ramon Magsaysay as principal sponsor.[7] Imelda's parents, Vicente Orestes Romuáldez and Remedios Trinidad, were also wedded in the church (albeit at dawn, at the insistence of the groom's mother) in 1928, while her father's first wife Juanita Acereda (d. 1926) is also interred in the church.[8]
Archbishop Gabriel M. Reyes, the archdiocese's first native Filipino ordinary who reigned from 1949 to 1952, was initially buried in the shrine before his remains were transferred to the crypt of Manila Cathedral.[3] Also buried in the church are Don Domingo Róxas, patriarch of the Zóbel-de Ayala-Róxas-Soriano clans.[5]
Gallery
Northern flank of the church, with its façade and twin belfries to the right
Statue of Saint Michael fighting the Devil, depicted as a dragon, in the parvise of the church
