<P> On June 19, 1960, Republic Act No. 2733, called the Limasawa Law, was enacted without being signed by the President of the Philippines . The legislative fiat declared The site in Magallanes, Limasawa Island in the Province of Leyte, where the first Mass in the Philippines was held is hereby declared a national shrine to commemorate the birth of Christianity in the Philippines . Magallanes is east of the island of Limasawa . In 1984 Imelda Marcos had a multi-million pesos Shrine of the First Holy Mass built, an edifice made of steel, bricks and polished concrete, and erected on top of a hill overlooking barangay Magallanes, Limasawa . A super typhoon completely wiped this out just a few months later . Another shrine was inaugurated in 2005 . </P> <P> Limasawa celebrates the historic and religious coming of the Spaniards every March 31 with a cultural presentation and anniversary program dubbed as Sinugdan, meaning "beginning .". Yet this has no reference at all to a Catholic mass being held on March 31, 1521 . </P> <P> Some Filipino historians have long contested the idea that Limasawa was the site of the first Catholic mass in the country . Historian Sonia Zaide identified Masao (also Mazaua) in Butuan as the location of the first Christian mass . The basis of Zaide's claim is the diary of Antonio Pigafetta, chronicler of Magellan's voyage . In 1995 then Congresswoman Ching Plaza of Agusan del Norte - Butuan City filed a bill in Congress contesting the Limasawa hypothesis and asserting the "site of the first mass" was Butuan . The Philippine Congress referred the matter to the National Historical Institute for it to study the issue and recommend a historical finding . Then NHI chair Dr. Samuel K. Tan reaffirmed Limasawa as the site of the first mass . </P> <P> Odoric of Pordenone, an Italian and Franciscan friar and missionary explorer, is heartily believed by many Pangasinenses to have celebrated the first mass in Pangasinan in around 1324 that would have predated the mass held in 1521 by Ferdinand Magellan . A marker in front of Bolinao Church states that the first Mass on Philippine soil was celebrated in Bolinao Bay in 1324 by a Franciscan missionary, Blessed Odorico . </P>

When did the first catholic mass take place in the philippines according to francisco albo