A QUEZON City court has ordered the prosecution to amend within 30 days the case filed against an exorcist priest accused of ridiculing the alleged Marian apparition in Lipa City in 1948, saying the complaint failed to state an offense against him.
In her order dated August 29, Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 81 Presiding Judge Madonna Concordia Echiverri said the failure of the prosecution to amend the case for “offending religious feelings” against Fr. Cabading will lead to the dismissal of the case.
Cabading, a parish priest at the Archdiocese of Manila Office of Exorcism, was sued by former Commission on Elections chief and Marian devotee Harriet Demetriu, who accused him of being a “rabid critic” of the Our Lady of Mary Mediatrix in Lipa.
A former trial court judge, Demetriu is best remembered for convicting former Calauan, Laguna town mayor Antonio Sanchez and seven of his henchmen in the 1995 rape-slay case of University of the Philippines Los Banos students Eileen Sarmenta and Allan Gomez.
Echiverri earlier issued a warrant against Cabading based on the complaint. He was arrested at the Saint Mary Magdalene House in Nasugbu, Batangas last May but was freed on P18,000 bail.
Cabading has moved to quash the information filed against him, arguing there was no allegation in Demetriu’s complaint that he made the statements in a place of worship or during the celebration of a religious ceremony to qualify it as an offense under Article 133 of the Revised Penal Code (RPC), which states that the acts complained must have happened or were done in a place devoted of religious worship or during the celebration of a religious ceremony, and that it must be offensive to the feelings of the faithful.
Punishment for violation of Article 133 of the RPC includes a prison term of up to two years.
“This court finds nothing in the quoted statements made by the accused to be offensive nor punishable by law. No object of veneration was damaged or destroyed by the accused in a religious ceremony nor was there any religious ceremony to speak of,” the court said, adding that Cabading seems to be merely echoing what the Vatican said of the alleged apparition.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith earlier asked the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines to dissuade any activities that run counter to the Church’s official position on the alleged Marian apparitions in Lipa.
To recall, the Vatican in 1951 said the alleged apparitions have no supernatural origin or character. It reaffirmed its decision with another decree in 2015.
In the same ruling, Echiverri also granted Cabading’s plea to be allowed to travel abroad to attend the International Conference of the Association of Exorcists in Italy from September 25 to 30 this year, saying he is not a flight risk. But the court directed Cabading to post a P36,000 travel bond.
The most prominent individual to be convicted under the same offense was the late celebrity and tour guide Carlos Celdran, who was sentenced by a Manila court in 2013 to one year and one-month imprisonment.
