On June 14, 1859, 10 Jesuits from Spain’s Aragon province arrived in Manila aboard the frigate Luisita. For the priests, it was the end of a long journey but for what was to become the Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU), it was the beginning of a journey that continues today.”

On June 14, 2009, Ateneo launched its sesquicentennial, 150th anniversary, with a Mass at the Manila Cathedral in Intramuros and other activities that traced the school’s history through six campuses and four Metro Manila cities. The celebration culminated on Dec. 10, the day the Spanish Jesuits established the Escuela Municipal de Manila, a public primary school in Intramuros, Manila.

Preparation for the milestone, with the theme “Celebrating Excellence, Deepening Spirituality, and Nation-building,” actually began on August 5, 2007, with simple rites at the university’s Loyola Heights campus in Quezon City.

During the June 14 Mass at the cathedral, with Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales as main celebrant, Fr. Jose Cecilio Magadia, provincial superior of the Society of Jesus and a member of the AdMU Board of Trustees, recalled the university’s history in a two-part homily.



Reputation as educators

Under a decree by Spain’s Queen Isabella, the Jesuits were mandated to conduct missionary work in Mindanao. But a group of Manila residents petitioned the Spanish authorities to allow the Jesuits to put up a school because of the Order’s reputation for excellence in education.

At first the Jesuits turned down the request but a decree was issued on Oct, 1, 1859, transferring the administration of the Escuela Pia, then the only primary school in the city, to them. The School was named Escuela Municipal.

When the new school opened on Dec. 10, 1859, it had an enrollment of 23 boys. By March 1860, students had increased to 170. Magadia said students chanted the Latin declensions, prayed the rosary and studied reading, writing, arithmetic, history, astronomy and religion

In 1865, the Escuela Municipal became the Ateneo Municipal de Manila and began offering baccalaureate degrees, as well as technical courses. Ateneo had its first graduates, 13 students, in 1870. The Philippine national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, graduated in 1877.

Magadia said, “By 1909, when the school was renamed Ateneo de Manila, it had well-established primary, secondary and tertiary levels.” Other Ateneos had since opened in Zamboanga, Cagayan de Oro, Naga and Davao, “along with other schools driven by the same Jesuits ideals of excellence and the need to do more for love of God, neighbor and country,” Magadia said.

Over the years, he said Ateneo had become a much respected institution, its students bringing the Ateneo spirit beyond their campus, and offering their lived for causes beyond themselves.

New missionaries needed

The Jesuit provincial told the Ateneo community that the current situation called for missionaries, besides those wearing priestly robes. He said the country was moving towards a “frightening future,” as it continued to be “pained by poverty, inequality and injustice, where Filipinos are left with little choice but to leave the country for a lack of a more stable future at home, where we remained bothered by a politics that is so mired in and stained by corruption, where the challenges of a new secularism and materialism, new philosophies that reject or undermine the transcendent, for whom God has disappeared into the mists.

The new missionaries, he said, should be people “who can play with the images of modern media, who can sing the music of our young, who can speak the language of government and politics, who can tap comfortably on keyboards, who can remain unfazed by new technologies  and new ideas and new trends.

Magadia said the new missionaries could be Ateneo alumni and friends who would share their spirituality through their businesses, family, life and parishes, and non-government organizations.


From the cathedral, faithful Blue Eagles led by Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, AdMU president, and businessman Manuel Pangilinan, chair of the Board of Trustees, proceeded to the nearby ruins of the San Ignacio Church, built in 1889 in honor of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus. There, Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim and Intramuros Administration head Bambi Harper led the ground-breaking rites for an ecclesiastical museum project. After breakfast of “old boys’ school” staples of pan de sal, peaches and hot chocolate, alumni and guests want on a motorcade that took them to the six current and former Ateneo campuses in Intramuros and Padre Faura (Manila, now part of the Robinsons Ermita mall), Ateneo Professional Schools in Salcedo Village and Rockwell (Makati), Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health in Pasig City and the main Loyola Heights (Quezon City) campus.

- Jerry E. Esplanada

This article first appeared in The Windhover, the Philippine Jesuit Magazine. For subscription information, e-mail:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it    Or download this document for more details: SUBSCRIBE TO THE WINDHOVER