Philippine Catholicism — Gomburza to the Aglipayan Schism

Spanish friars had run the Philippine church for three centuries, and the century's great church fight was over whether Filipinos could run their own parishes. The secularization campaign — transferring parishes from Spanish religious orders to diocesan clergy, most of them native-born — turned into a national grievance, and in 1872, after a mutiny at the Cavite arsenal, three priests who had championed it were garrotted: Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora, remembered ever since by the single name Gomburza. Their execution did more for the independence movement than their campaign ever had; Jose Rizal dedicated his second novel to their memory. When Spanish rule ended, part of the church went with it. In 1902 the labour organizer Isabelo de los Reyes proclaimed an Iglesia Filipina Independiente and named the former revolutionary chaplain Gregorio Aglipay its head, and for a few years a substantial minority of Filipino Catholics followed it.