The Ossorio family, who owned interests in the Victorias Milling Company, commissioned the chapel between 1948 and 1950. They initially considered offering the project to Leandro Locsin, then a young and unproven Filipino architect. They changed their mind and selected Antonin Raymond, a Czech-American architect already recognized as one of the founders of modern architecture in Japan. Raymond had designed buildings across the United States, Japan, India, and Indonesia. His design for the Victorias chapel addressed the Philippines' seismic reality head-on: the structure consists of two sections, the nave and the tower, connected by movable beams that allow the building to flex during earthquakes rather than crack. He also designed for the tropical climate, maximizing air circulation through the hot, humid interior. The result is considered the first example of modern sacred architecture in the Philippines, and in December 2015, it was declared an Important Cultural Property of the nation.

Alfonso Ossorio was born in the Philippines but made his career in the New York art world, where he moved in the circle of Jackson Pollock and Clyfford Still. His mural for the family chapel dominates the sanctuary wall: a vibrant, confrontational image centered on a large eye and the angry-looking figure of Christ. The painting owes nothing to the sentimental religious art that filled Philippine churches for centuries. It is abstract expressionism applied to devotion, and its emotional register is closer to judgment than to comfort. Ossorio's intent was not to soothe worshippers but to challenge them, creating a Christ who demands rather than invites. The sanctuary itself has no reredos, no ornamental screen behind the altar. There is only the mural, filling the wall with a force that makes decoration redundant.

While Ossorio's mural draws the headlines, the chapel's most quietly radical art may be the work of two local artists. Arcadio Anore executed the designs of Belgian artist Adelaide de Bethune for the brass plates in the pulpit and baptistery. Benjamin Valenciano carved the wooden sculptures inside the church, including all fourteen Stations of the Cross. Their contribution was recognized for introducing a distinctly Filipino vision of sacred art: Mary, Joseph, and the figures in the Stations have brown skin and wear traditional Filipino attire. In a country where colonial-era religious imagery had overwhelmingly depicted its subjects as European, this choice was both a theological statement and a cultural reclamation. The sacred story belongs to the people who pray in this chapel, and their art insisted that the figures in that story look like them.

The chapel's construction had an unexpected consequence for Philippine architecture. When the Ossorio family passed over Leandro Locsin in favor of the internationally acclaimed Raymond, the rejection pushed Locsin to rethink his approach. He shifted toward the modern architectural language that would eventually make him famous and earn him the title of National Artist of the Philippines. In this way, the chapel shaped Philippine architecture twice: once through what Raymond built inside the Victorias compound, and once through what Locsin built everywhere else in response. The chapel sits today within the sugar mill's residential complex, a setting that reinforces its origin as an expression of industrial patronage. Sugar wealth built the building. Global art connections filled it. Filipino artisans made it their own.