Church of Aglipay

The Church of Aglipay was founded in September 1902, born of the same nationalist revolutionary movement which sought to throw off the Spanish yoke, both military and political. The Spanish religious authorities barely tolerated the Filipino clergy, and a priest named Gregorio Aglipay who had great influence over the Catholics of the Philippines refused to recognise Spanish religious supremacy and appealed to Rome. He had no intention of breaking away from the Church, but the intransigence of the Papal envoys drove him into schism, and he then accepted the title which he had previously refused of the Supreme Bishop of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, an independent Filipino church free of all foreign influence.