AGLIPAYSMO. — By this name and by that of the “Philippine Independent Church” is designated the sect founded by the apostate priest Gregorio Aglipay y Labayan, born at Batao (Philippines) on 7 May 1870. We know of him that, with the help of the Recollect Friars of Manila, after his initial studies he entered the seminary, where he was ordained a priest in 1889. A fiery partisan of the independence of the Philippines from Spain, he assisted the leader of the insurrection, Aguinaldo, serving as military chaplain to the revolutionary government, without heeding the admonitions and censures of the archbishop of Manila, Nozaleda.
After the Philippines were occupied by the Americans in 1898, and since they had not granted the islands independence, Aglipay continued the struggle against them; but he was forced to surrender in 1901. In August 1902, disgusted at having been unable to obtain the political independence of his homeland, he claimed to give it religious independence and established the “Philippine Independent Church,” of which he constituted himself “pontifex maximus,” appointing as bishops several priests who had followed him in the rebellion.
In its beginnings, Aglipayism did not depart greatly from Catholic doctrine and worship; and when some Protestants, with whom he was on excellent terms, encouraged him to proceed further, he replied, “It is better that the rupture with the Catholic Church should appear as little as possible.” Asked by a Protestant what he thought of the future of his Church, he replied that the first step was separation from Rome; and when asked what the second would be, he answered without hesitation: “Protestantism.” In fact, he went so far as to reach the extreme of anti-Trinitarianism. In a public discourse, attended by many of his followers and by Protestants, speaking of Magdalene and the Apostles, he said: “It was they who deified the Master with that legend (of the Resurrection), but modern man, progressive by nature, has rejected these childish illusions...” and finally concluded: “Jesus, gentlemen, neither died on the cross nor rose again.”
At first, Aglipay had many followers among Filipino nationalists, and he prepared the ground for the American sects that inundated the archipelago; yet these sects, although at the beginning they praised him greatly because, through his rupture with Rome, he “had broken through the barrier of fear and freed some who wished to find the way open to God,” now do not even mention him in the list of Filipino Protestant Churches.