Vice Mayor Loma Angeles Bernardo of Pasig City led the ceremonies renaming Amber Drive to Blessed Josemaria Escriva Drive. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of the Opus Dei, inspired the establishment of the University of Asia and the Pacific and the Santa Maria Stella Orientis Oratory located in this street.

“The fact that devotees of Blessed Josemaria Escriva from all over the Philippines come to attend services at Stella Orientis Oratory adds honor and prestige to our beloved city of Pasig,” according to Vice Mayor Bernardo. She thanked the University of Asia and the Pacific for being a partner in the economic boom and progress of Pasig City in recent years. “We need institutions like you, who continuously support us in all our endeavors,” she added.

The University of Asia and the Pacific, formerly the Center of Research and Communication, is a project of the first members of Opus Dei in the Philippines. According to Dr. Jose Ma. Mariano, President of the University, “Msgr. Josemaría Escriva, in a conversation in Rome with Dr. Jesus Estanislao and Dr. Bernardo Villegas in the mid-sixties, gave the initial impetus”. It was established in 1967 and moved to the Ortigas Center in 1982.

“Blessed Josemaría provided us with a rich inspiration that we at the University strive to live by” Mariano said. “Our work, buttressed by research and the burning want to learn and to serve, must reach 'out there' — the drives and streets and the neighboring community of Pasig, from the working professionals of Ortigas Center to the many in need —of education, of material resources, of hope— in the impoverished barangays,” Mariano said.

Since his beatification in 1992, streets, chapels, schools and a mountain peak have been named in honor of Blessed Josemaria in different parts of the world. This is the first such landmark in the Philippines and in Asia.