Mass Stipends in the Philippines

What the Arancel Is §

The question a Philippine parish office hears, what to give for a Mass, has a history of its own. The Philippine bishops call it the arancel, and in 2021 they defined it as “the fixed amount asked for services given in our churches.”¹ It reaches well beyond Masses. Manila’s 2021 decree named baptism, confirmation and Mass intentions;² Talibon’s named the sacraments and covered burials, funerals and fiestas.³

The bishops have meant to move away from it for more than fifty years. A compilation of the Conference’s decisions from 1964 to 1979, published in the Boletín Eclesiástico de Filipinas in 1980 and read here in a scanned copy, records one of January 1969: “Semblance of commercialism, particularly in the administration of sacraments should be eschewed,” and the arancel system “will eventually be eliminated.” The same compilation records that the Conference later approved its gradual elimination and asked each diocese to try it first in three parishes, “one poor, another medium class and a third one rich.”⁴

The Conference’s own law was more cautious. Among the complementary norms it made under the 1983 Code, which received the Holy See’s recognitio in 1985 and took effect on 1 January 1986, the norm on the faithful’s support of the Church says, “The present arancel system of the Philippines is recommended to continue,” and adds that experiments in phasing it out in pilot parishes are encouraged.⁵ The Code leaves that kind of norm to the conference: the faithful are to support the Church by the contributions asked of them and according to the norms the conference of bishops lays down (canon 1262). The norm still stands in the text the Conference publishes on its website.

Then, in 1991, the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines decreed, in the words the bishops quote from it, that “tithing, after a good pastoral catechesis, shall be introduced with the end in view of the gradual abolition of the Arancel System” (Decree 118). We have read the decree only as the bishops quote it.¹

What the Philippine Bishops Said in 2021 §

On 28 January 2021, in the year the country marked five hundred years of the Christian faith, the Conference renewed that commitment in a pastoral statement on stewardship, signed by its president, Archbishop Romulo Valles of Davao:

The ‘arancel’, which is the fixed amount asked for services given in our churches, can be a hindrance for the poor to receive God’s grace and blessings. Let us do our best, then, to remove obstacles to genuine service, especially to the poor. [...] Therefore, we, as Church in the Philippines, once more commit ourselves to the gradual abolition of the arancel system.

Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, Pastoral Statement on Stewardship, 28 January 2021.¹

The bishops committed themselves to teaching stewardship to clergy, religious and laity “in view of adopting a concrete stewardship program in our dioceses to replace the arancel system as soon as possible,” and promised a service arm for dioceses that found it hard.¹ The Conference now has an Office on Stewardship, chaired by Bishop Broderick Pabillo, whose stated mission is to help dioceses and institutions carry out stewardship programs.⁶

The statement names no amount, and it doesn’t single out Mass offerings: it speaks of “services given in our churches.” It also keeps the word “gradual.” The Conference’s news service reported two days later that “a number of dioceses” had already scrapped the arancel,⁷ but we found no list of them published by the Conference.

Dioceses That Have Ended Fixed Rates for Mass Intentions §

These are the dioceses whose decision we could read in their own words or in a report that quotes them. It isn’t a full list.

Manila

On 25 March 2021, Bishop Broderick Pabillo, as apostolic administrator, decreed that “beginning April 14, 2021, there will be no longer be any fixed rates for the celebrations of the sacraments of baptism and confirmation and for the offering of Mass intentions in the churches in the Archdiocese of Manila.” We haven’t found the decree itself: those words are as the archdiocese’s own news page quoted them, which we read in the Internet Archive’s copy because the page no longer opens. The same report adds that donations are still encouraged for the support of the churches.² It and the Conference’s news service both mention a 2017 pastoral letter of the bishops of the Province of Manila on stewardship and the arancel; we found only these reports of it, not the letter.⁸ Ask your parish office or the chancery what applies now.

Talibon

Bishop Patrick Daniel Parcon issued his decree at the Chrism Mass on 29 March 2021, in force from 1 May. We have it only as the Inquirer reported it (read in the Internet Archive’s copy): “there will no longer be a fixed amount for the sacraments in the Diocese of Talibon; the arancel system is hereby gradually abolished.” Offerings freely and sincerely given, he said, are most appreciated.³ In 2025 the Conference’s news service reported that the diocese had ended in 2021 all the set amounts for baptisms, funerals, weddings and Mass intentions, and had worked to standardize priests’ allowances.⁹

Lingayen-Dagupan

SunStar reported in 2021 that Archbishop Socrates Villegas first issued the order in 2015.¹⁰ Jeffrey Segovia, of the archdiocese, writing in the University of Santo Tomas journal Philippiniana Sacra in 2025, lists a 2011 circular titled “Phase-out of the Arancel System”, says the arancel was “officially abolished in ALD since 2013”, and dates the launch of the archdiocese’s stewardship program, called Pananábangan, to 1 May 2015.¹¹ We couldn’t open the circulars themselves. What is clear is the archbishop’s word in 2024, when he found the old ways returning in a few parishes. In Circular 2024-13, issued on Pentecost Sunday, 19 May 2024, Archbishop Socrates Villegas wrote, as Rappler reported it:

If the parish secretary or staff is asked about the ‘cost’ of a Mass intention, a minimum amount is said or insinuated. THIS MUST STOP.

Archbishop Socrates Villegas, Circular 2024-13, 19 May 2024, as quoted by Rappler, 22 May 2024.¹²

He also asked parish priests to warn their secretaries and cashiers “against declaring or insinuating fixed rates for the sacraments and sacramentals,” and to ask parishioners how the office handles it.¹² That is one archdiocese’s rule for its own offices.

If your diocese has published a decree on Mass offerings and it isn’t here, write to elias@memento.church with the link, and we’ll add it with its date.

Is There a Set Amount in Pesos? §

Not one we could find in a published Church document. We looked on the Conference’s website, in the diocesan decisions and reports above, and in web searches in English and Tagalog on 14 October 2026. That isn’t proof that none exists. The Conference’s 2021 statement gives no figure, and its complementary norms carry no norm on canons 945 to 958 at all.⁵ That’s what the Code would lead you to expect, because it doesn’t give the Mass offering to a bishops’ conference. It belongs to the bishops of each province, by decree, and where they’ve made none, the custom of the diocese stands (canon 952). So where a Philippine figure exists, it is a province’s or a diocese’s, and the parish office or the chancery is the place to ask. In Manila, Talibon and Lingayen-Dagupan, the bishops’ published decisions are that there is no fixed rate.

We don’t estimate one: canon 952 leaves the figure to each province, and an estimate is a number no bishop set.

What the Universal Law Says §

Underneath every Philippine decision is the same law the whole Latin Church keeps. When you ask for a Mass, it’s customary to give an offering, as the Church has long approved, and a priest may accept it so that he applies the Mass for your intention (canon 945). Those who give it “contribute to the good of the Church, and by that offering share in her care for the support of her ministers and works” (canon 946, our translation). Every appearance of bargaining or commerce is to be kept entirely away from it (canon 947). A priest may not ask for more than the figure laid down, and he may accept more or less (canon 952). And the law closes the canon on the custom with this:

Enixe commendatur sacerdotibus ut, etiam nulla recepta stipe, Missam ad intentionem christifidelium praecipue egentium celebrent.

Priests are earnestly urged to celebrate Mass for the intention of the faithful, especially those in need, even when no offering has been received.

Canon 945 §2. Latin · The Holy See’s English · Our translation.

The Code does provide for set offerings. For the sacraments and sacramentals, the bishops of a province define the offerings (canon 1264), and the minister is to ask nothing beyond the offerings the competent authority has defined, always taking care that the needy are not deprived of the sacraments because they are poor (canon 848). In 2025 the Holy See set those two canons, 848 and 945 §2, at the head of its article on offerings (2025 decree, Art. 3 §1).

The Holy See had already spoken to parishes about this in 2020. Its instruction on the parish asks that nothing give the impression that the sacraments, “especially the Holy Eucharist”, are “subject to tariffs” (Congregation for the Clergy, instruction of 29 June 2020, no. 40), and it says of the offering:

This means that an offering, by its very nature, must be a free act on the part of the one offering, left to one’s conscience and sense of ecclesial responsibility, not a “price to pay” or a “fee to exact”, as if dealing with a sort of “tax on the Sacraments”.

Congregation for the Clergy, instruction The pastoral conversion of the Parish community, 29 June 2020, no. 118. The Holy See’s English.

The same instruction, written for the whole Church, asks that the faithful be taught to give freely to their parish (no. 119), and suggests receiving offerings anonymously, “so that everyone feels free to donate what they can, or what they think is just” (no. 121).

What Still Applies in the Parish Office §

Ending a fixed rate doesn’t end the Mass book. Whatever a diocese decides about amounts, a parish that receives Mass offerings keeps a book recording the number of Masses to be said, the intention, the offering given and the celebration once it’s done (canon 958). Each offering given and accepted, however small, is owed a Mass of its own (canon 948). A priest who says several Masses in a day keeps the offering for one of them only, Christmas Day apart, and the rest go to the purposes his Ordinary lays down (canon 951).

Two questions are harder where there’s no fixed rate, and the documents we found don’t settle either. When someone gives a sum for Masses without saying how many, the number is reckoned from “the offering established in the place where the donor lives” (canon 950, our translation). And the 2025 decree asks every Christian community to keep daily Masses for a single intention possible, at the established offering the bishops of the province fix (Art. 1 §4). How either is applied in a diocese that has decreed no fixed rate is a question for your chancery. So is a question a canonist would ask: how a diocesan decree of no fixed rate sits with canon 952, which gives the figure to the bishops of the province, and with Art. 1 §4. None of the documents we read addresses it, and we don’t answer it here; your chancery, or a canonist it points you to, can.

The decree touches two other habits a busy office may have. One Mass for many people’s offerings, a “collective” intention, is allowed only where the bishops of the province have provided for it by decree and every giver was told and explicitly agreed; consent is never presumed (Art. 1 §§1 and 2). Where the province has decreed nothing, the 1991 decree Mos iugiter still governs (Art. 6). We found no Philippine province’s decree under Article 1, so ask your chancery whether yours has made one (the decree, article by article). And no offering may be asked, or even accepted, for a name simply remembered at Mass or at a celebration of the Word, as distinct from a Mass applied for that person (Art. 4 §§2 and 3).