"While Innocent X was governing the Church, King Felipe IV the Españas, and Don Sabiniano Manrique de Lara, knight of the Order of Calatrava, the Filipinas Islands, this stone for the building of this holy cathedral--its titular being the Conception, and its patron St. Andrew the apostle--was placed in position by Don Miguel de Poblete, metropolitan archbishop, April 20, 1654."
The building of that cathedral proceeded, as the time, which was very full of troubles, allowed; accordingly it lasted for many years, two or three years having passed without any work; and its dedication services were held on September 8, 1671. It is of Doric architecture and has three naves, and is very strong, as it is built of heavy stone. It has a reredos of the finest sculpture in these islands. It was completed by Archbishop Don Diego Camacho y Ávila, who built a very beautiful high tower that contains some very fine bells. [91] He also built the sacristy and other parts which were wanting for the completion of the cathedral, and adorned it with a quantity of wrought silver and very rich ornaments and lamps, which he sent from Guadalajara, for he was not forgetful of his first spouse.
Wreck of the galleon "San Diego;" the mission that arrived from Nueva España; and the feast of the Conception of our Lady.
This province of ours was very deficient in religious to fulfil its charge of the instruction and teaching of so many villages, which were commended to our care as the first spiritual conquistadors of these remote islands. Nine years had already passed since the last mission had reached this province (in the year 1645), during which sixty religious had died; and, besides, the procurators who had been sent to España to get new missions had suffered the same fate. Father Fray Cristobal Enriquez, although he reached Madrid, and presented himself before the royal and supreme Council of the Indias for that purpose, did not obtain a favorable despatch. For, permission having been given him to conduct thirty religious to these islands, and trusting to that and having assembled and conducted many from the provinces of España to Sevilla (in which he had spent the little that he had for that purpose), a new decree was issued in which he was ordered to suspend the transportation of the thirty religious who had been allowed to him, under pretext of inability to equip them because of the many war expenses of that time. The religious who were assembled in Andalucía returned to their provinces; and father Fray Cristobal Enriquez, having spent all his supply money, died in the city of Cáceres, which was his birthplace.