Perjury case by retired justice vs Dominican exorcist junked

A perjury case filed by retired Justice Harriet Demetriou against Dominican theologian and exorcist Fr. Winston Cabading has been dismissed for "insufficiency of evidence".

In a ruling released on Tuesday, Makati Senior Assistant City Prosecutor Crystal Dei Embido-Buenaventura said Demetriou’s allegation that Cabading made a “willful and deliberate assertion of falsehood” in his Petition for Review dated May 27, 2023 to the Department of Justice (DOJ) has no basis since there is no proof or document to support her claims.

Demetriou charged Cabading for allegedly committing perjury when the priest executed and signed the following alleged false statements under oath:

In his counter-affidavit, Cabading said that the existence of the 1951 Decree and the 2015 CDF Document “was duly established and proven”. He added that Demetriou’s “refusal to recognize the official issuances of the Catholic Church only shows her real design to harass” him.

Embido-Buenaventura said that what the Dominican priest wrote in his petition was based on what the Vatican officially stated and not based on his opinions.

The prosecutor added that the priest’s statement cannot be construed as “offensive to all the faithful devotees” like Demetriou, and should not be considered as “willful and deliberate assertions of falsehood” as alleged by Demetriou, a former justice of the Sandiganbayan and former chairperson of the Commission on Elections.

In a 2015 decree, Gerhard Cardinal Mueller, the then-prefect of the CDF reiterated the 1951definitive negative finding of the Vatican on the Lipa apparitions.

The same decree also mentioned that the then-Lipa Archbishop Ramon Arguelles has no authority over the matter effectively overruling Arguelles’s earlier controversial decree declaring the Lipa apparitions “worthy of belief”.

In July 2023, the Vatican ordered the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) to stop any activity celebrating the 75th anniversary of the alleged apparition of the Virgin Mary in in Lipa.

The then-Prefect of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, Luis Cardinal Ladaria, S.J wrote to CBCP president and Kalookan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David saying it “would not