IFI San Roque Chapel (Aglipay)

History Source: Wiki Gregorio Aglipay was an activist and a Roman Catholic priest from Ilocos Norte who would later be excommunicated by then Archbishop of Manila Bernardino Nozaleda y Villa for fomenting schism with the Pope. During the Philippine Revolution, Isabelo de los Reyes (also known as Don Belong) and Aglipay acted to reform the Filipino Catholic clergy. Aglipay was the convener of the Filipino Ecclesiastical Council (Paniqui Assembly), in response to Mabini's manifesto urging the Filipino clergy to organize a Filipino national Church. He was a member of the Malolos Congress, the lone member coming from the religious sector, although he also represented Ilocos Norte. He was a guerilla leader of Ilocos Norte during the Philippine–American War with the rank of lieutenant general. Following the Philippine–American War, Aglipay and De los Reyes founded the Philippine Independent Church in 1902. The new church rejected the spiritual authority of the Pope (then Pope Leo XIII) and abolished the celibacy requirement for priests, allowing them to marry. At that time, all of its clergy were former Catholic priests. Aglipay drew upon the Masons for some concepts of theology and worship. He was supported by Miguel Morayta, the Grand Master of the Spanish Orient Lodge of Freemasonry in Madrid.[8] Aglipay became a Mason in 1918.[9] The historian John N. Schumacher contends that Morayta and other non-Filipino laymen pushed Aglipay toward schism with the Catholic Church because of their resentment of the activities of Catholic religious orders in the Philippines rather than Filipino nationalism.[8] The new Iglesia Filipina Independiente reformed the Latin Tridentine liturgy, adopting the vernacular in worship, and modeling its liturgy on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Mass in the IFI has been said in Spanish since the earliest days of its independence, but it is also said in Tagalog. Visiting other churches while traveling abroad, Aglipay developed his theology, coming to reject the divinity of Jesus and the concept of the Trinity and becoming theologically Unitarian. Other IFI officials refused to accept this revised theology. Aglipay's unitarian and progressive theological ideas were evident in his novena, Pagsisiyam sa Birhen sa Balintawak, 1925[10] and its English translation, Novenary of the Motherland (1926).[11] Winning large numbers of adherents in its early years because of its nationalist roots, Aglipayan numbers decreased due to factionalism and doctrinal disagreements. The American government of occupation, after the Philippine–American War ended in July 1902, decided to return to the Catholic Church those parish buildings that had become Aglipayan during the Philippine Revolution and this further limited church growth. There were tensions within the church from the beginning between Aglipay's liberal followers and more traditional members. Eventually there would be a schism: after Aglipay's death in 1940 the courts awarded the name and assets to the Trinitarian faction. Some factions formally joined other denominations including the Episcopal Church and the American Unitarians. In 1961, the IFI joined the Anglican Communion and its bishops were re-consecrated into the historic succession of the Anglican line.