The Minor Basilica of the Holy Child and commonly known as the Santo Niño Basilica, is a minor basilica in Cebu City in the Philippines that was founded in the 1565 by Frays Andrés de Urdaneta, O.S.A. and Diego de Herrera, O.S.A.. The oldest Roman Catholic church in the country, it is built on the spot where the image of the Santo Niño de Cebú was found during the expedition of Miguel López de Legazpi. The icon, a statue of the Child Jesus, is the same one presented by Ferdinand Magellan to the chief consort of Rajah Humabon upon the royal couple's christening on April 14, 1521. It was found by a soldier forty years later, preserved in a wooden box, after Legazpi had razed a local village. When Pope Paul VI made the church a basilica in 1965, he said it is "the symbol of the birth and growth of Christianity in the Philippines."
The present building, which was completed from 1739-1740, has been designated by the Holy See as the "Mother and Head of all Churches in the Philippines" (Mater et Caput... Omnium Ecclesiarum Insularum Philippinarum).