Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage

Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage (Nuestra Señora de la Paz y Buen Viaje; Mahal na Birhen ng Kapayapaan at Mabuting Paglalakbay), also known as Our Lady of Antipolo and the Virgin of Antipolo (Virgen ng Antipolo), is a seventeenth-century Roman Catholic wooden image of the Blessed Virgin Mary as venerated in the Philippines. This Black Madonna is enshrined in Antipolo Cathedral in the Sierra Madre mountains east of Metro Manila.

The image was brought to the country by governor-general Juan Niño de Tabora from Mexico via the galleon El Almirante in 1626. His safe voyage across the Pacific Ocean was attributed to the image, which was given the title of "Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage". It was substantiated later by six other successful voyages of the Manila-Acapulco Galleons with the image aboard as its patroness.

Pope Pius XI issued a Pontifical decree to crown the image in 1925. The statue is one of the most celebrated Marian images in the Philippines, having been mentioned by national martyr José Rizal in his writings. From May to July each year, the image attracts millions of pilgrims from all over the country and abroad. Its feast day is on the first Tuesday of May.

History
On 25 March 1626, the galleon trading ship El Almirante left Acapulco, Mexico, carrying the newly appointed governor-general of the Spanish East Indies, Don Juan Niño de Tabora, who brought with him the statue. He arrived in Manila on 18 July 1626, and the statue was brought to San Ignacio Church of the Jesuits in Intramuros. When governor Tabora died in 1632, the statue was given to the Jesuits for enshrinement in the church of Antipolo, which was then being built in the present-day barangay Santa Cruz.

The beliefs and traditions conducted through Our Lady of Antipolo are of animist origins and are connected with the Tagalog male boatman sea god Maguayen, which was originally a Visayan deity, known to be a god and a goddess in the Visayas. Trade and migration between the Tagalog and Visayan instilled the beliefs of Maguayen on the animist religion of the Tagalog, which was later inputted towards Catholic beliefs on the Virgin Mary.

Claims of miracles
During construction of the Antipolo church in the 1630s, the image would mysteriously vanish several times from its shrine, only to reappear atop a tipolo tree (a type of breadfruit; Artocarpus blancoi, which is native to the Philippines and had spread to Latin America). This was taken as a celestial sign, and the church was relocated to where the tipolo tree stood. The image's pedestal is supposedly made from the trunk of that same tipolo tree, which also gave its name to Antipolo itself.

In 1639, the Chinese rose in revolt, burning the town and the church. Fearing for the statue's safety, governor Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera ordered its transfer to Cavite, where it was temporarily enshrined. governor Hurtado later ordered the statue removed from its Cavite shrine in 1648, and it was shipped back to Mexico aboard the galleon San Luis. At the time, the statue of a saint onboard served as a ship's patron saint or protector of the Acapulco trade. The statue crossed the Pacific six times aboard the following Manila-Acapulco galleons:
 * San Luis — (1648–1649)
 * Encarnación — (1650)
 * San Diego — (1651–1653)
 * San Francisco Javier — (1659–1662)
 * Nuestra Señora del Pilar — (1663)
 * San José — (1746–1748)

A royal decree by Queen Isabella II on 19 May 1864 ordered that the parishes of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino be turned over to the Jesuits in exchange for the parishes of Antipolo, Taytay and Morong, which were given to the Augustinian Recollects. The latter order thus came into possession of the image.

Second world war
In 1944, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded the town and turned it into a garrison, with the shrine being used as an arsenal. To save the image, the church's head sacristan, Procopio Ángeles, wrapped it in a thick woollen blanket and placed it in an empty petrol drum, which he then buried in a nearby kitchen.

Fighting between imperial Japanese troops and the combined American and Filipino forces drove Ángeles and other devotees on 19 February 1945 to exhume the image and move it to Sitio Colaique on the border with Angono. From there, it was spirited away to the lowland Barangay Santolan in Pasig, and then to the town center of Pasig itself. The statue was then kept by Rosario Alejandro (née Ocampo), daughter of Pablo Ocampo, at the Ocampo-Santiago family residence on Hidalgo Street, Quiapo, Manila, before it was enshrined inside Quiapo Church for the remainder of the Second World War.

On 15 October 1945, the statue was translated back to its church in Antipolo, where it remains today.

Pontifical approbations

 * Pope Pius XI granted a decree of pontifical coronation to the image via the former Archpriest of Saint Peter's Basilica, Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val on 18 June 1925. The rite of coronation was executed by the former   Archbishop of Manila, Michael James O'Doherty, on 28 November 1926 at Luneta (present-day Rizal Park), Manila.
 * Pope Francis, through the Dicastery for Evangelization, elevated the cathedral to an international shrine on 18 June 2022, making it the third international shrine in Asia, First in Southeast Asia, First Marian International Shrine in Asia, as well as the first in the Philippines and the eleventh in the world. The decree took effect on 25 March 2023, and the solemn declaration was held on 26 January 2024.
 * Pope Francis gifted a Golden Rose to the cathedral and image on 26 February 2024.

Cathedral shrine
The first missionaries in Antipolo were the Franciscans, who arrived in the vicinity in 1578. The Jesuits then followed and administered the church from 1591 until May 1768, when the decree expelling the Jesuits from Spanish lands reached Manila.

The church was greatly damaged during the Chinese uprising of 1639, the 1645 Luzon earthquake, and the earthquakes of 1824 and 1883. Notable Filipino historians such as Pedro Chirino and Pedro Murillo Velarde (also a prominent cartographer) ministered at the church.

The Diocese of Antipolo was created on 24 January 1983 and was canonically erected on 25 June 1983 at the diocese's new see, which bears the formal title of "International Shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage-Immaculate Conception Parish".

Pilgrimage
Pilgrimages to the image's shrine begin and peak in May, which in Catholicism is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Locally known as "Ahunan sa Antipolo" and dubbed as the "Longest Pilgrimage Season in the Philippines", it is initiated yearly by the "Pagdalaw ng Ina sa Anak" (Mother's Visit to her Son), which is the temporary transfer of the image from Antipolo Cathedral to Quiapo Church, where the Black Nazarene is enshrined. It is usually done on the Saturday before 1 May. A welcome Mass is held in Quiapo Church in the morning. On the evening of 30 April, thousands of devotees from Metro Manila customarily perform the Alay Lakad (literally, “Walk Offering”), where pilgrims spend the night travelling on foot to the shrine, where they hear Mass at dawn. This is one of two occasions that the Alay Lakad is held — the other is during Holy Week, on the evening of Maundy Thursday.

The custom of visiting the Antipolo shrine in May, however, was already recorded by the 19th century. On 6 June 1868, a young José Rizal and his father Don Francisco Mercado, visited the shrine in thanksgiving after the boy and his mother, Teodora Alonso Realonda, survived her delivery in 1861.

The nine-week Pilgrimage Season starts on the first Tuesday in May of each year. Since 2019, the Solemnity of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage is celebrated on this day, pursuant to a decree dated 21 May 2018 by the former Bishop of Antipolo, Francisco Mendoza de Leon. On that day, a procession of the image starts at 7:00 a.m. from the cathedral to Pinagmisahan Hill, where, at the end, a commemorative thanksgiving Mass is celebrated since 1947. It was here on 3 May, the Feast of the Holy Cross, that a wooden cross was blessed and erected. The Pilgrimage Season ends on the first Tuesday in July.

Rosary and novena prayers of seven sets are held during the pilgrimage season, with a Marian procession held at the end of each set.

Television
In December 2011, the Eternal Word Television Network programme Mary: Mother of the Philippines ran an episode showcasing the statue as the “most traveled Marian icon in the Philippines”.