Court allows exorcist priest to travel to Italy

MANILA, Philippines — A Quezon City court has granted the petition of an exorcist priest to travel to Rome, Italy to attend the International Conference of the Association of Exorcists.

Judge Madonna Echiverri of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 81 allowed Fr. Winston Cabading to leave the country from Sept. 25 to 30, saying he is not a flight risk.

Echiverri ordered Cabading to pay a travel bond of P36,000 or twice his bail of P18,000.

Cabading is facing a complaint for offending religious feelings filed by former Commission on Elections chief Harriet Demetriou, who is a Marian devotee.

He had said that the Our Lady of Lipa devotees are not true Marian devotees.

Cabading was arrested in Nasugbu, Batangas in May and was freed on bail.

The court also gave the prosecution 30 days to amend the complaint against Cabading, saying the charge against him failed to state a criminal offense.

In an order dated Aug. 29, Echiverri ordered the prosecutor to amend the complaint filed against Cabading, a Dominican priest accused of ridiculing the alleged Marian apparition in Lipa, Batangas in 1948. Otherwise, the court said, it would “dismiss this case.”

Demetriou filed the case over Cabading’s statements in a 2020 online show where he cited the Vatican’s statement that the petals from the apparition are “not from God” and that the Our Lady of Lipa devotees are not true Marian devotees because they supposedly only want to listen to “what pleases them.”