School that closed seminary loses land to Pampanga archdiocese

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO — The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC) has announced the closure of its Chevalier School in Angeles City in 2021 after it failed to get a new land lease contract with the Archdiocese of San Fernando (ASF) in Pampanga.

Fr. Leonardo Cabrera, MSC provincial superior in the Philippines, said the closure was a “consequence of the departure of the MSC from the ASF.”

“The MSC was told that the ASF has no more plans to renew any contract with the MSC,” he said, referring to the outcome of a Nov. 14 meeting.

Cabrera’s Nov. 28 letter was posted by Chevalier School Inc. on social media. He did not say if there was a plan to relocate Chevalier or if MSC was actually buying another plot of land for the school.

It accepted boys from Grades 5 and 6 in 1976, offered complete elementary in 1987, opened kindergarten and prep classes in 1991, and accepted girls in recent years.

In a phone interview, Archbishop Florentino Lavarias said the ASF, which owns the three-hectare property, “will not take over the school, only the lot.”

The ASF, Lavarias added, will “pay for the buildings.”

In the letter, Cabrera explained that in the case filed by Chevalier’s stakeholders, the court in 2017 stopped the MSC from signing a new lease contract with the ASF. They insisted that the 1958 contract remained valid.

The ASF reclaimed the land after the Holy See through the Church court confirmed the “abolition” of the Oct. 31, 1958 contract because the Sacred Heart Mission Seminary, for which the land was leased by the late Bishop Emilio Cinense for one peso a year for 99 years, had ceased to exist and was closed before 1972.

The MSC argued it was only a change of name. Chevalier had no more seminary, offering only elementary and high school education.

The disputed land is reportedly the only piece of property left to the ASF after it gave its landholdings for social justice to the government’s land reform program.