Minor Basilica of Our Lady of Manaoag

Image: Wikimedia Commons

On a hilltop in Pangasinan, in the northern Philippines, the Minor Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Manaoag enshrines the venerated image affectionately called Apo Baket. The shrine goes back to around 1600 and to the tradition of an apparition of the Virgin to a local farmer, from which the town takes its name; the present neo-Romanesque church, entrusted to the Dominicans, was built between 1901 and 1912. Among the miracles attributed to Our Lady of Manaoag, the church is said to have escaped flaming arrows and wartime bombs unscathed, and millions of pilgrims visit every year.