On 25 March 1626, the
galleon trading ship
El Almirante left
Acapulco, Mexico, carrying the newly appointed
Governor-General of the
Spanish East Indies,
Juan Niño de Tabora, who brought with him the statue. He arrived in Manila on 18 July 1626, and the statue was brought to the old San Ignacio Church of the
Jesuits in
Intramuros. When Governor Tabora died in 1632, the statue was given to the Jesuits for enshrinement in the church of Antipolo, which was then being built in the present-day
barangay Santa Cruz.
Claims of miracles During construction of the Antipolo church in the 1630s, the image would mysteriously vanish several times from its shrine, only to reappear atop a tree (a type of breadfruit;
Artocarpus blancoi, native to the Philippines and had spread to Latin America). This was taken as a celestial sign, and the church was relocated to where the
tipolo tree stood. The image's
peaña (pedestal) is supposedly made from the trunk of that same
tipolo tree, which also gave its name to Antipolo itself.
In 1639, the Chinese rose in revolt, burning the town and the church. Fearing for the statue's safety, governor
Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera ordered its transfer to
Cavite, where it was temporarily enshrined. Governor Hurtado later ordered the statue removed from its Cavite shrine in 1648, and it was shipped back to Mexico aboard the
galleon San Luis. At the time, the statue of a saint onboard served as a ship's
patron saint or protector of the Acapulco trade. The statue crossed the Pacific six times aboard the following Manila-Acapulco galleons: •
San Luis — (1648–1649) •
Encarnación — (1650) •
San Diego — (1651–1653) •
San Francisco Javier — (1659–1662) •
Nuestra Señora del Pilar — (1663) •
San José — (1746–1748) A royal decree by
Isabella II of Spain on 19 May 1864 ordered that the parishes of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino be turned over to the Jesuits in exchange for the parishes of Antipolo, Taytay and Morong, which were given to the
Augustinian Recollects. The latter order thus came into possession of the image.
Second World War In 1944, the
Japanese Imperial Army invaded the town and turned it into a garrison, with the shrine being used as an arsenal. To save the image, the chief
sacristan, Procopio Ángeles, wrapped it in a thick woollen blanket and placed it in an empty petrol drum, which he then buried in a nearby kitchen. Fighting between imperial Japanese troops and the combined American and Filipino forces drove Ángeles and other devotees on 19 February 1945 to exhume the image and move it to Sitio Colaique on the border with
Angono. From there, it was spirited away to the lowland Barangay Santolan in
Pasig, and then to the town center of Pasig itself. The statue was then kept by Rosario Alejandro, daughter of
Pablo Ocampo, at the Ocampo-Santiago family residence on Hidalgo Street,
Quiapo,
Manila, before it was enshrined inside
Quiapo Church for the remainder of the
Second World War. On 15 October 1945, the statue was
translated back to its church in Antipolo. ==Pontifical approbations==