Baclayon Church
Roman Catholic parish church in Baclayon, Bohol
Immaculate Conception Parish Church, (formally: La Purísima Concepción de la Virgen María Parish Church) and informally called Baclayon Church, is a Roman Catholic church in the municipality of Baclayon, Bohol, Philippines within the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Tagbilaran. Baclayon was founded by the Jesuit priest Juan de Torres and Gabriel Sánchez in 1596, and became the oldest Christian settlement in Bohol. It was elevated as a parish in 1717 and the present coral stone church was completed in 1727. The Augustinian Recollects succeeded the Jesuits in 1768 and heavily renovated the church since then.
The church was declared a National Cultural Treasure by the National Museum of the Philippines and a National Historical Landmark by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines. Together with the churches of Maragondon, Loboc and Guiuan, the Baclayon Church was formerly included for the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List of the Philippines since 1993 under the collective group of Jesuit Churches of the Philippines. When a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Bohol and other parts of Central Visayas in 2013, the church building sustained major damage. It was reconstructed by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines from 2014 to 2018.
History
The Jesuits were the first evangelizers of Baclayon, planting the first seeds of Christianity in Bohol upon the request of Doña Catalina de Bolaños, mother of the encomendero of Bohol island, Pedro de Gamboa to Father Antonio Sedeño, mission superior of Leyte and Samar. On November 17, 1596, the first Jesuits, Father Juan de Torres, SJ and Father Gabriel Sánchez, SJ, came to Baclayon.
The public source identifies “Baclayon Church” as roman Catholic parish church in Baclayon, Bohol. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Baclayon, Church and Roman.
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Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18216785. Authority coordinates are 9.623, 123.912. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1596, 1717, 1727 and 1768.
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This entry incorporates text from “Baclayon Church” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.