Baclaran — the National Shrine of Our Mother of Perpetual Help
The story of Baclaran Church in the Philippines, where the Wednesday Perpetual Novena began in 1948 and grew into one of the largest weekly devotions in the world.
22 October 2026 · 2 min read
If one place shows how far the devotion to Our Mother of Perpetual Help has travelled, it is Baclaran, in Parañaque on the edge of Manila. The National Shrine of Our Mother of Perpetual Help — known to everyone simply as Baclaran Church — draws enormous crowds every Wednesday.
The Redemptorists arrive
The Redemptorists settled in Baclaran in 1932. At the time it was a quiet place on the outskirts of the city.
The first Wednesday Novena
The Perpetual Novena had begun in St. Louis, in the United States, in 1922, and had already reached Iloilo, Lipa and Cebu. On Wednesday 23 June 1948 the Redemptorists held the first Perpetual Novena in Baclaran. About seventy people came.
The following week the number doubled. The chapel held only about three hundred people, so more sessions were added, and by the end of 1949 there were eight crowded sessions every Wednesday. By 1950 the same prayers were being said in parishes across Manila. You can read the wider story in The Perpetual Novena — from St. Louis to Baclaran.
"Wednesday is Baclaran day"
Over the decades Wednesday became, for many Filipinos, simply Baclaran day. People come before work, after school, between errands — to pray the Novena, to bring a petition, or to give thanks. The shrine is famous for the thousands of letters of petition and thanksgiving it receives, many of which are read at the novena services.
Our Mother of Perpetual Help is the patroness of Baclaran, and the shrine remains one of the great centres of Marian devotion in Asia.
The Novena today
The Baclaran novena prayers were revised in 1973 and again in 2016, for the 150th anniversary of the icon's return to public veneration in Rome. Wherever you are, you can join the same devotion: pray the Novena and entrust an intention.