A Century of Religious Architecture in the Philippines (1921-2021)

Abstract

Trying to condense in a single article the religious architecture produced during the 20th century in the Philippines is an arduous task. It is a country with ninety million Catholics, the third largest in the world after Brazil and Mexico, so the number of recent churches is very high. And although among them there are works that are at the level of the most internationally celebrated architectures, this enormous contemporary production has hardly been studied as a whole -much less disseminated- either inside or outside its borders. This text shows some significant examples that aim to illustrate the three periods into which the 20th century has been divided, each lasting about forty years: the American colony (1898-1946), independence and subsequent dictatorship (1946-86) and the fully democratic era (1986-2021). Finally, a brief reference is made to the architecture of the other Christian denominations and other minority religions.