Beautiful....... the oldest church in Bohol, Baclayon church.
Actually, Baclayon Church in Bohol claims to be the first stone church built by the Spaniards in BOhol, and it was dated 1596, or a year after Fray de Torres and Sanchez and tehir company of jesuit servants landed in Baclayon upon the request of Sra. Catalina de Bolanos, the administrator of the properties of a rich kid here named Pedro de Gamboa.
But owing to the piratical raids that pester the coastal villages, including Baclayon, the Spaniards decided they could not insist on defending the place, its people and the leaving the ongoing construction unfinished.
Eventually, they have to abandon the project for a place where they would be relatively safe from the pirates.
They then sailed off to Loboc, following the river inland where there was a fishing community where they would again start a building by 1600-1602. By the unhampered activity in building the church, it was later completed.
It was only after more then 200 years when the jesuits went back to Baclayon to finally complete the structure in 1725.
Here, what i am telling is this: Baclayon was the first stone church started here, but it was not the first one that was completed; its Loboc.
The church in Loboc however got burned later and so the Jesuits put up another church a few meters away from the old one.
From the fabric of the old Loboc church now rises the thress storey convent of the town, perhaps the only three storey convent in the country.
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