The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has set a Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025, groundbreaking date for the Tacloban City Philippines Temple, one of 13 houses of the Lord that are operating, under construction or in planning for the Southeast Asia island nation.
Elder Michael B. Strong, a General Authority Seventy and second counselor in the Philippines Area presidency, will preside at the invitation-only event.
The temple in Tacloban City
Planned as a two-story building of approximately 21,407 square feet, the Tacloban City Philippines Temple will be built on a 6.99-acre site located along the Tacloban Bypass Road near the barangays (barrios) of Utap and Caibaan in Tacloban City. Tacloban is located on Leyte Island in the Philippines’ Eastern Visayas region.
Every effort is made to construct temples in an expeditious manner. At times, various reasons may delay a temple’s completion and dedication.
The groundbreaking date was published Monday, Nov. 25, on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Church President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple for Tacloban City on Oct. 2, 2021, it being one of 13 new temple locations he identified in the Sunday afternoon session of October 2021 general conference.
The Tacloban temple site was released by the First Presidency earlier this year, with the site location map published on March 25.
The Church in the Philippines
Aniceta Fajardo was the first Filipino baptized, in 1946, being taught and converted by Latter-day Saint servicemen stationed in the Philippines during World War II. While a few others joined later in the 1940s and into the 1950s, missionary work on the Southeast Asia island nation didn’t start until 1961.
By the end of the 1960s, the Church had a presence on eight major islands. In 1974, then-Elder Ezra Taft Benson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles organized the first stake in the Philippines. And in the 1990s, membership surpassed a quarter of a million members.
Today, more than 867,000 members of the Church reside in the Philippines and comprise nearly 1,300 congregations. That makes for the fourth-largest population of Latter-day Saints in any country, behind only the United States, Mexico and Brazil.
Temples in the Philippines
Today, the Philippines has 13 total houses of the Lord — dedicated and operating, scheduled for dedication, under construction or in planning.
The Manila Philippines Temple (dedicated in 1984), the Cebu City Philippines Temple (2010) and the Urdaneta Philippines Temple (2024) are the country’s three dedicated and operating houses of the Lord.
Four temples are under construction — in Alabang (started in June 2020), Davao (November 2020), Bacolod (December 2021) and in Cagayan de Oro (August 2024). Besides Tacloban City, five other temples have been announced and are in planning — Iloilo, Laoag, Naga, Santiago and Tuguegarao City.
