the seat of the Archdiocese of Jaro. Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and the Our Lady of Candles is the official Catholic patronesses of the Archdiocese. The Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria or Our Lady of the Candles is the official patron of the whole Western Visayas and Romblon. Being designated as a National Shrine, Jaro Cathedral is likewise widely known as the seat of Roman Catholicism in Western Visayas. The said designation (National Shrine) by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines is the first of its kind in the region, the second in the Visayas (after Cebu), and the first Marian-dedicated church outside of Luzon. Protestantism formed as the second-largest faith in the City of Iloilo. Protestant sects were brought by the Americans when the Philippines was ceded to American rule by Spain through the 1898 Treaty of Paris. The said faith brought by the United States in the heavily Roman Catholic Iloilo has gained adherents and still continues to grow at present. Iloilo which is one of the pioneering places in the country where Protestants set foot strongly contributed due to its economic importance on the international scene in the early 1900s. The American colonial government tolerated religious freedom that even to this day Iloilo is still predominantly Catholic. Presbyterians and Baptists are among the first Protestant sects that arrived in Iloilo. The arrival of the American Protestant denominations resulted in the establishment of notable pioneering institutions in Iloilo. The Presbyterians established the Iloilo Mission Hospital in 1901 (the first American and Protestant hospital in the Philippines) while Baptists established the American John D. Rockefeller-funded Central Philippine University in 1905 (the first Baptist and second American university in the Philippines and in Asia), Jaro Evangelical Church in 1900 (the first Baptist church in the Philippines and also the first Protestant church outside Manila (2nd in the Philippines after the Central United Methodist Church in Manila), and the Convention of Philippine Baptist Churches (the first and oldest Baptist churches organized in the Philippines). The Seventh-day Adventists did not join the comity agreement with the early Protestant sects for jurisdictional division on the Philippine islands for missionary works, because they wanted to go to any parts of the country. They arrived years later following the advent of Protestant missions in the Philippines in the early 1900s in Iloilo. Their arrival resulted in the founding of Jaro Adventist Center, the first