History
Since 1935, the SVD priests of Christ the King Mission Seminary attended to the pastoral and spiritual needs of a limited farming community around Manga Road in Cubao by first celebrating mass in a small chapel near the present Cubao rotonda. Fr. Henry Demond, SVD then celebrated Mass in the residence of a certain Carbonell family, before to a quonset mess hall on what are now Spence and Brooklyn streets. The building was abandoned by the combined US-Philippine Commonwealth Armed Forces. As with other agrarian communities, farmers tilling the surrounding rice paddies invoked San Isidro Labradór, so the chapel built there was dedicated to him and belonged to the Sacred Heart Parish in Kamuníng. While teaching as theology professor at Christ the King Mission Seminary (and later as Prefect of Scholastics), Fr. Ambrosio Manaligod consistently lent a helping hand to the pastoral work of the parish especially in the direction of lay organisations.
In 1949, the chapel was re-dedicated to the Immaculate Conception. On 15 July 1950, the community chapel was elevated into a parish, the first curé were the Argentine Fr. Juan Simon (1950–1954); he was succeeded by the German Frs. Alois Vogel (1954-1956) and Benito Rixner (1956–1958). For years the parish remained under the administration of the Society of the Divine Word, which was easy due to the proximity of the church to the main residence of the SVD missionaries at Christ the King Mission Seminary.
In 1989, SVD Superiors offered the parish to the Archdiocese of Manila in keeping with the missionary spirit marked out in their constitutions. Official handover took place on Easter Sunday, 1990 with Msgr. Reynaldo Celso as the First Diocesan parish priest. Due to the population increase of Catholics in Metro Manila, the Archdiocese was gradually partitioned, creating the new diocese of Cubao on 28 August 2003. The parish was selected to be the seat of the new diocese and its bishop, and extensive renovations were carried out soon after.
Read more about this topic: Cubao Cathedral
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