San Diego Pro-cathedral

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An early 20th-century Catholic church, and the only church in Negros Occidental with a dome. It is also the only pro-cathedral in the country, under the Diocese of Bacolod, and it stood in for the Bacolod cathedral during repairs.

Work started in 1925 on a grander church to replace the older stone one, which the 1898 revolution had left unfinished. The sugar baron Jose Ledesma paid for much of it, and the rest came from public collections, including money raised by schoolchildren. He hired an Italian architect, Lucio Bernasconi, who took the churches of his own country as the model. The plan is a Latin cross, and the cupola rises forty metres above the nave. The church opened in 1927. Its patron is Didacus of Alcalá, known here as San Diego de Alcalá, and the parish kept his name until the bishop made it a pro-cathedral in 1994.

Town

Silay City

Written by an editor · 22 Sep 2026 · source: Wikipedia, San Diego Pro-Cathedral, Silay