page_title: Sogod, Southern Leyte
section_title: Immaculate Conception of Mary Parish
hierarchical_section_title: Sogod, Southern Leyte / Demographics / Religion / Roman Catholicism in Sogod / Immaculate Conception of Mary Parish
caption_attribution_description: Immaculate Conception Shrine
context_page_description: Sogod, officially the Municipality of Sogod, is a 2nd class municipality in the province of Southern Leyte, Philippines. According to the 2015 census, it has a population of 44,986 people.
  The name of the municipality originated from the Cebuano word, sogod, meaning "to start." Founded as a Catholic mission station by the Society of Jesus in 1601, Sogod became a regular municipality on June 10, 1853.
  Sogod is located along the Southern Leyte section of the Pan-Philippine Highway, 126 kilometers south of Tacloban City, the regional center of Eastern Visayas. Rugged mountains enveloped most of the town's northern terrain with numerous river systems crept throughout the southern lowlands. Known as the center of trade, commerce and industry in the south-central region of Leyte, Sogod is also home to Southern Leyte State University Main Campus and Saint Thomas Aquinas College.
context_section_description: According to a 2016 parish-wide census, the Immaculate Conception parish of Sogod has a total land area of 145.27 square miles. With a total population of 31,148 inhabitants, the recorded Catholic population in the parish exceeds to 27,449 individuals. The remaining 3,699 individuals belong to Islam and other mainline Protestant denominations. A proposed mission station, dedicated to Saint Lorenzo Ruiz, will be established at barangay Libas this 2018 to cater the pastoral and spiritual needs of the western villages of the town.
  Aptly chosen as the patroness of the municipality as well by the community, the Immaculate Conception of Mary Parish of Sogod is the mother-parish of the ecclesiastical districts of barangay Divisoria, Bontoc  (1995), Bontoc (1957), barangay Consolacion, Sogod (1967) and Libagon (1869/ reestablished in 1924).
  The church structure was once constructed in barangay Zone III, made out of light materials during the time of Father Tomas Logroño. It remained there until the early 1930s, until it was moved to the new town hall site in barangay Zone I. Old parishioners recall that the building was made out of hardwood. Around the 1960s, a lot was donated in barangay Rizal for the construction of a concrete edifice, which is now the present church and rectory of Sogod.
caption: The Immaculate Conception Shrine, which stood beside the parish rectory, was recently demolished to give way for the construction of a multi-purpose covered court that would house civil and religious activities in the town. It was a project earmarked by the former parish priest, now deceased Monsignor Felix Paloma, PC
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