Getting our Philippine history right after 500 years – Part 18

For over 276 years a false narrative about the Magellanic sojourn in the Philippines in 1521 - that the Spanish fleet anchored "in the island of Butuan" and held the first Holy Mass there and not in Mazaua - remained unchallenged and unrectified in world history.

In 1797, however, this narrative unraveled when the long-lost Italian manuscript of Antonio Pigafetta on Magellan's voyage was accidentally found by the Augustinian priest Dr. Carlo Amoretti at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. The manuscript categorically stated that Mazaua was that First Mass site.