Augustinian Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus of the Philippines

The Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus of the Philippines of the religious Order of St. Augustine was officially formed on March 7, 1575.

It was an offshoot of the establishment of the first permanent Spanish settlements in the Philippines by Adelantado Miguel López de Legazpi. The then Prior General of the Order, Fr. Tadeo de Perusa, issued the decree creating the new Augustinian Province in the Philippines to be known as the Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus of the Philippines (Santisimo Nombre de Jesus de Filipinas). A decade earlier, in 1565, Legazpi arrived in the Philippines at the head of an expedition sent by Viceroy Luis de Velasco of New Spain to discover islands west of the Moluccas upon the orders of the Spanish monarch. Enlisted to guide the perilous voyage was the famed navigator Andrés de Urdaneta (b. 1498 - d. June 3, Mexico, 1568), an Augustinian friar.

Although a veteran of previous voyages across the Pacific, Father Urdaneta was reluctant to take part in the expedition, let alone command it. When he declined the offer to lead, the responsibility fell upon the shoulders of Legazpi. Already in his sixties and in poor health, Father Urdaneta considered himself retired as a navigator especially after having earlier turned his back on the world by joining the Augustinian Order in Mexico.

But when King Philip II of Spain ordered the viceroy to "prepare a fleet of discovery" of the western islands near the Moluccas and wrote Father Urdaneta a letter asking him to guide the voyage, he felt compelled to obey for "the glory of God and the expansion of our faith." The Spanish Crown between 1525 and 1542 had sent several expeditions to strengthen its claim on the Moluccas, but none of these voyages ended in a permanent Spanish presence in the Philippines. Having ascended to the Spanish throne, Philip II ordered his men to concentrate their efforts on the Philippines, a move that was also meant to avoid further conflict with the Portuguese, the main Spanish rival in this frenetic period of the Age of Discovery.

...
Wikipedia