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Gregorio Labayan Aglipay (May 8, 1860 – September 1, 1940) was the first Filipino Supreme Bishop of the Philippine Independent Church. Born in Batac, Ilocos Norte. Aglipay was an orphan who grew up in the tobacco fields in the last volatile decades of the Spanish occupation of the Philippines. He bore deep grievances against the Spanish, stemming from abuses within the agricultural system and the radical ecclesiastical reforms he championed. Arrested at fourteen for not meeting his tobacco quota, he later moved to Manila to study law at the Colegio de San Juan de Letran and at the University of Santo Tomas. After obtaining his degree, he then entered the seminary in Ilocos Sur in 1883 and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood seven years later. He began a career as an assistant priest in various parishes around Luzon. In spite of being a Catholic priest, Aglipay, like other Filipino revolutionaries, joined the Freemasons.

Isabelo de los Reyes was attempting to establish a national Filipino church. On August 3rd, he suggested a church independent of Rome with Gregorio Aglipay as its Supreme Bishop. Aglipay, a devout Catholic.On January 18, 1903, Aglipay was appointed Supreme Bishop of the Philippine Independent Church by the bishops of Manila, Cavite, Nueva Ecija, Isabela, Cagayan, Pangasinan, and Abra. The Philippine Independent Church, (officially the Spanish: Iglesia Filipina Independiente ir the IFI, alis a Christian denomination of the Catholic tradition in the form of a national church. The church was founded by the members of the first federation of labor unions in the country, the Union Obrera Democratica (UOD) in 1902. Isabelo de los Reyes was the founder of the church and suggested to make Gregorio Aglipay[1][2] its head. It is also known as the Aglipayan Church after its first obispo maximo, Gregorio Aglipay. Communion) and, since 1965, with the Old Catholic Union of Utrecht Association of Churches. Today the Philippine Independent Church or

Aglipayan Church is the second largest Christian denomination in the Philippines after the Roman Catholic Church. The bulk of the Aglipayans comes from the northern part of the island of Luzon, especially in the Ilocandia region, where its first supreme bishop came from. Now the church is divided into 10 dioceses which includes the Diocese of United States and Canada. But, due to a lack of priests, many parishes in the USA are priestless. The Philippine Independent Church is considered the most tangible product of the 1898 Revolution against Spain Gregorio Aglipay was an activist Catholic priest from Ilocos Norte who, despite his intercession and defense of some of the Spanish Catholic clergy from liberal-nationalist Filipino revolutionaries, was excommunicated by the Vatican for inciting rebellion within the Filipino clergy. During the brief interlude between independence from the Spanish and the subsequent reoccupation by the Americans, Isabelo de los Reyes (also known as Don Belong) and Aglipay reformed the Filipino Catholic clergy into the Philippine Independent Church, officially established in 1902. The new church absolutely rejected the spiritual authority of the Pope (then Pope Leo XIII) and abolished the celibacy requirement from its clergy, allowing marriage among its priests, who were all former Catholic priests.