Demetriou complaint vs priest over unverified ‘miracle’ junked

MANILA, Philippines — The Makati City Prosecutor’s Office has dismissed a perjury complaint that retired Sandiganbayan justice Harriet Demetriou filed against exorcist priest Fr. Winston Cabading last year.

In a resolution dated Jan. 19 but released only on Tuesday, Senior Assistant City Prosecutor Crystal Embido-Buenaventura said she found no probable cause to indict Cabading for perjury.

Demetriou alleged in her complaint that Cabading committed perjury when he made false statements in a petition before the Department of Justice on May 27, 2023.

In Cabading’s petition before the DOJ, the priest said that a papal decree of Pope Pius XIII on March 29, 1951 declared that the 1948 Lipa Marian apparitions had “no supernatural character” and that a 2015 Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith decree, which Pope Francis approved on Dec. 11, 2015, affirmed that the apparition was not of supernatural origin.

The Makati Prosecutor’s Office said in dismissing the case that there is no proof or any document proving that the statements of Cabading in his petition are false. It noted that the statements “are merely reiterations of the Vatican’s declarations and are not merely based on his opinions.”

“In view of the foregoing, it is respectfully recommended that the complaint against respondent Winston Ferdinand Roman F. Cabading be dismissed for insufficiency of evidence,” the resolution read.

In December 2022, Demetriou also sued Cabading for “offending religious beliefs.” She accused the priest of being a “rabid critic” of the Mediatrix of All Grace, whose supposed apparition happened at the Carmelite Monastery of Lipa in Batangas in 1948.  

Cabading said all his claims about the Lipa apparition were reiterations of the Vatican’s decision and the Catholic church’s teachings.