EDSA Shrine

Also known as: National Shrine of Mary, Queen of Peace · Shrine of Mary, Queen of Peace · Mary, Queen of Peace Shrine · Our Lady of EDSA · Our Lady of Peace Quasi-Parish

Places

Definition

The EDSA Shrine, formally the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of Peace (Our Lady of EDSA), is a Roman Catholic church and Marian shrine at the corner of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) and Ortigas Avenue in Barangay Ugong Norte, Quezon City — the intersection where hundreds of thousands of unarmed Filipinos massed during the 1986 People Power Revolution, the uprising this wiki’s entry on the EDSA People Power Revolution documents. Proposed by Jaime Cardinal Sin two days after the fall of the Marcos government as an act of thanksgiving to the Virgin Mary, the shrine was founded on December 8, 1989, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and its church was consecrated on December 15, 1989; its crowning image is the bronze statue of Mary, arms outstretched above the avenue, executed by the Filipino sculptor Virginia Ty-Navarro. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine, EDSA Shrine — Official Website)

Administered by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Manila, the shrine was for years a quasi-parish known as Our Lady of Peace, and was declared a National Shrine by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines on January 25, 2025 — the elevation its own website was still petitioning for in an August 2024 post soliciting miracle stories. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine, EDSA Shrine — Official Website) The site returned to the center of Philippine politics in January 2001, when the crowds of the Second EDSA Revolution gathered around the shrine until Joseph Estrada left office. (Wikipedia — Second EDSA Revolution)

Identities

Source	Identifier	URL
Wikipedia	EDSA Shrine	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDSA_Shrine
Wikidata	EDSA Shrine (Q2914138)	https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2914138
DBpedia	EDSA_Shrine	https://dbpedia.org/page/EDSA_Shrine
ProductOntology	N/A	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A	N/A
MeSH	N/A	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A	N/A
Google Scholar	EDSA Shrine Mary Queen of Peace Our Lady of EDSA People Power Revolution 1986 Virginia Ty-Navarro Francisco Mañosa Quezon City Cardinal Sin	N/A
ConceptNet	N/A	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A	N/A

Also Known As

National Shrine of Mary, Queen of Peace
Shrine of Mary, Queen of Peace
Mary, Queen of Peace Shrine
Our Lady of EDSA
Our Lady of Peace Quasi-Parish

Examples and Analogies

A bronze guardian over a highway: Ty-Navarro’s 1989 statue — roughly 10.7 meters tall and weighing some eight tonnes, Mary crowned and in golden robes with her Immaculate Heart exposed and white doves at her hands and feet — stands above the traffic like a lighthouse over the very stretch of pavement where armor was stopped by civilians in February 1986; the sculpture was executed in San Juan and lifted into place by helicopter, with United States embassy assistance, because the roads were too narrow to haul it. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)
A church sunk into history: the shrine complex, designed by the Filipino architect Francisco Mañosa with a promenade (the People’s Plaza) around the statue and an underground church inspired by the Cathedral of Brasília, works like a monument built downward — the sanctuary beneath the square so that the open ground where the crowds stood remains the shrine’s principal nave. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)
One corner, two transferred presidencies: the intersection functions in national memory as a civic switchboard — 1986, when Sin’s Radio Veritas appeals filled EDSA to protect the defectors, and January 2001, when protests at the same shrine followed the Senate impeachment vote and ended with Gloria Macapagal Arroyo sworn in at EDSA — the second uprising this wiki’s Second EDSA Revolution entry documents. (Wikipedia — Second EDSA Revolution, Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)
Holy Ground: after the 2001 uprising Cardinal Sin declared the site “Holy Ground” and installed a marker, and the podium reliefs recall both revolutions — consecration language given to pavement, the physical formula by which a road shoulder became a sanctuary. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)

Usage Scenarios

1. Pilgrimage and Worship

The shrine functions as a working parish church of the Archdiocese of Manila, with weekday and Sunday Masses through the day (7:00 a.m., 12:15 p.m., and 6:00 p.m. on weekdays in its current schedule) and a ministry led since 2022 by its rector, Rev. Fr. Jerome R. Secillano, assisted by vice rector Rev. Fr. Edric S. Bedural. (EDSA Shrine — Official Website, Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)

2. People Power Anniversary Observances

Every February 25 the shrine anchors the national commemoration of the 1986 revolution, from government rites at the site to its own liturgical program — most recently the 40th People Power Anniversary in 2026, announced by the shrine as spiritual, cultural, and community activities “under the loving guidance of Our Lady of EDSA.” (EDSA Shrine — Official Website)

3. Assemblies and Public Protest

Because of its history, the shrine’s plaza operates as default ground for mass assemblies: the January 2001 crowds of the Second EDSA Revolution, with a ten-kilometer human chain reaching the shrine; the pro-Estrada EDSA III gathering of April 25 to May 1, 2001; the August 4, 2012 Reproductive Health Bill protests; the September 7, 2013 EDSA Tayo anti-pork-barrel rally; the Iglesia ni Cristo protests of August 27–31, 2015; the November 5, 2017 “Lord, Heal Our Land” Mass; and the Trillion Peso March of September 2025 to February 2026. (Wikipedia — Second EDSA Revolution, Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)

4. Studying Church–State History and Heritage

Scholars and students use the shrine as the standing artifact of 1986 and 2001 — the statue, the People’s Plaza, the Holy Ground marker — and as a declared heritage object in its own right: the complex was declared an Important Cultural Property in 2019, and in 2024 Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, stated that the shrine belongs to the whole country, not just Manila. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)

Strategies

Visit the shrine as two sites in one: pilgrims and tourists should read the complex as both church and monument — the underground sanctuary for worship, the plaza and statue for the memory of 1986 — the pairing its Mañosa master plan was built around. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)
Distinguish the shrine from the People Power Monument: researchers should keep separate the EDSA Shrine (the church at EDSA–Ortigas) and the People Power Monument elsewhere on EDSA — a recurring confusion in popular accounts of where the 1986 crowds stood. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)
For institutions planning assemblies: the shrine’s experience since 1986 — hosting protests from EDSA II to EDSA Tayo — makes it the standing Philippine case study in managing a religious site that doubles as the country’s most symbolically charged protest venue. (Wikipedia — Second EDSA Revolution, Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)

Security and Safety Measures

Crowd management on a living highway: assemblies at the shrine take place beside one of Metro Manila’s busiest thoroughfares, so event security historically depends on coordinating with police and local government rather than the enclosed controls of an ordinary church compound — the standing lesson of the 1986 and 2001 gatherings. (Wikipedia — Second EDSA Revolution)
Protection of a cultural property: its 2019 declaration as an Important Cultural Property brings the statue, plaza, and church under the state’s heritage protection regime, the legal safeguard for the physical fabric of a functioning memorial. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)
Care of the Marian image: the eight-tonne bronze statue — helicopter-lifted into place in 1989 because road transport was impossible — remains a structural and conservation responsibility particular to this shrine, from its rooftop pedestal exposure to EDSA’s traffic and weather. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)
Verify claims against primary records: because the site is entangled in contested politics, responsible accounts of what happened at the corner in 1986 and 2001 should rest on the documented record of those events rather than on commemorative folklore. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine, Wikipedia — Second EDSA Revolution)

Historical Context

The shrine was conceived in the immediate afterglow of the revolution. Two days after Ferdinand Marcos left Malacañang in February 1986, Cardinal Sin — whose Radio Veritas appeals had helped summon the crowds, and whose career this wiki’s Jaime Cardinal Sin entry records — proposed a monument of thanksgiving to the Virgin Mary, the idea taking shape as churchmen driven toward Camp Aguinaldo passed the billboards of the Family Rosary Crusade along EDSA. Land at the corner was donated by the Ortigas and Gokongwei families after an earlier plan to build inside Camp Crame was abandoned. Francisco Mañosa designed the complex — his unused bahay-kubo “People’s Basilica” concept giving way to the promenade-and-underground-church scheme built — and Virginia Ty-Navarro took the statue commission after Napoleón Abueva and Manny Casal were considered, both contributing other works on the grounds. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)

The dedication fell in the storm of the 1989 coup attempt, the bloodiest rising against the Aquino government, which this wiki’s 1989 Philippine Coup Attempt entry documents; the ceremonies proceeded as planned, with the founding dated December 8, 1989 and the consecration December 15, 1989. Socrates Villegas served as the first rector from December 8, 1989 to July 3, 2004, followed by Victor Apacible, Leo Nilo Mangussad, Lazaro Abaco (2015–2022), and Jerome Secillano (2022–present). The shrine’s political afterlife began when the January 2001 impeachment-crisis crowds made it their staging ground — Cardinal Sin calling the faithful to the shrine after the Senate vote of January 16, the human chain of January 18, and Arroyo’s oath-taking before the EDSA crowd on January 20 — and Sin then declared it Holy Ground. Its ecclesiastical standing rose in step: from quasi-parish to its 2025 declaration by the CBCP as a National Shrine, an elevation the shrine community had publicly petitioned for months earlier. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine, Wikipedia — Second EDSA Revolution, EDSA Shrine — Official Website)

Challenges and Controversies

The Shrine as Political Stage

The shrine’s second career as protest ground divides opinion as much as it commemorates. EDSA II — the January 2001 assembly that ended the Estrada presidency — is defended by its participants as a repetition of 1986 and criticized, including by constitutionalists and churchmen, as an extra-constitutional removal that a sacred site helped legitimize; the same grounds then hosted EDSA III, the pro-Estrada rally of April–May 2001, in an explicit counter-claim on the shrine’s symbolism. The debates over Cardinal Sin’s interventions, traced in this wiki’s Jaime Cardinal Sin entry, remain the standing Philippine argument over when religious authority may mobilize a flock against a government. (Wikipedia — Second EDSA Revolution)

A Sacred Site Borrowed by Every Cause

Because 1986 made the corner the country’s symbolic ground zero, groups of opposing agendas have each claimed it — Reproductive Health Bill opponents in 2012, anti-pork-barrel campaigners of EDSA Tayo in 2013, the Iglesia ni Cristo in 2015, and the 2025 Trillion Peso March among them — forcing the shrine’s administrators to referee between its liturgical identity and its civic one, a tension Bishop Pablo Virgilio David addressed in 2024 by declaring that the shrine belongs to the whole country and not to one see or faction. (Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)

Anniversary Politics

Each February 25 observance is read politically: attendance by sitting presidents, the presence or absence of the 1986 protagonists’ families, and rival characterizations of People Power’s meaning make the shrine’s commemoration an annual contest over the revolution’s legacy — the contest this wiki’s entries on the EDSA People Power Revolution and the Second EDSA Revolution document from the events’ side. (EDSA Shrine — Official Website, Wikipedia — EDSA Shrine)