Demetriou urges CBCP to hold new inquiry on 1948 Lipa ‘apparitions’

The statue of Mary Mediatrix of All Grace stands at the spot in the Carmelite convent garden in Lipa, Batangas, where Teresita Castillo supposedly saw the Lady in 1948. No visitors are allowed in the garden. —Contributed photo

MANILA, Philippines — Former Commission on Elections chair and Sandiganbayan Justice Harriet O. Demetriou has urged the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) to open a new inquiry into the Lipa incident in 1948 in which the Blessed Mother was supposed to have appeared before a Carmelite nun in Batangas.

In a letter dated April 28, 2022, to Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David,  the new CBCP president, Demetriou, urged the bishops to tackle the matter in their bi-annual meeting this July.

“(T)he CBCP is morally mandated to re-visit and re-examine (the alleged apparitions),” said Demetriou, a Marian devotee and Catholic lay leader.

A commission of bishops that investigated the incident had ruled in 1951 that the “extraordinary happenings” at the Carmelite convent in Lipa City had no “supernatural” basis.

READ: CBCP bows to Vatican on ‘Lipa apparitions’

Aside from the alleged apparitions to then Carmelite postulant Teresita Castillo, the “extraordinary happenings” included the celebrated rain of rose petals and the alleged imprint of the images of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary on them.

Manila Auxiliary Bishop (later Cardinal) Rufino Santos, who was apostolic administrator of Lipa, issued a decree repeating the findings of the commission and ordering the icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Carmelite convent, under the title “Mary Mediatrix of All Grace,” “be retired from public veneration.”

The decree likewise stopped pilgrimages to the convent “until final decision will come from the Holy See.”

Since then, however, relatives or associates of the bishops who sat in the church inquiry have executed testimonies that the prelates had told them they signed the negative verdict because they were forced to by Santos, who became the first Philippine cardinal, and the apostolic delegate, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Egidio Vagnozzi.

In 1994, retired Borongan Bishop Godofredo Pedernal executed an affidavit saying that while he was a seminarian visiting the Carmelite sisters of Lipa in 1948, he personally witnessed the shower of rose petals.

He added that as confidante of Lipa Auxiliary (later full) Bishop Alfredo Obviar, he personally witnessed him visiting other members of the commission—San Fernando Bishop Cesar Ma. Guerrero, Jaro Archbishop Jose Maria Cuenco and Nueva Segovia Auxiliary Bishop Juan Sison—in their death beds and asking them why they signed “the declaration about the foolishness of the Lipa Carmel Sisters.”

The prelates, according to Pedernal, showed Versoza the petals they had kept as souvenirs and told him: “We were forced to sign.”

In 1990, then Lipa Archbishop Mariano Gaviola allowed the Marian image to be exposed again.

In 2015, Archbishop Ramon Arguelles, who succeeded Gaviola, reopened the canonical investigation. It later ruled that the incident was of “supernatural” nature.

But the following year, the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) overruled Arguelles, saying that Pope Pius XII had made a definitive confirmation of the 1951 finding.

Arguelles himself announced the CDF ruling but he did not show any document signed by Pius XII confirming the 1951 commission’s declaration. He resigned afterward.

Demetriou said the 2015 CDF ruling didn’t show the alleged approval by Pius XII.

“The Office of the Vatican Archives does NOT have a copy of the aforesaid 1951 Papal Decree and NEITHER does the … CDF,” wrote Demetriou to David.

She added that the journals of the Dominican clinical psychologist Fr. Angel de Blas, who was tasked by the bishops commission to interrogate Castillo, had been discovered from the archives of the Dominican Order in Santa Sabina, Rome.

She said that De Blas, “a well-respected psychologist and moral theologian,” had found Castillo “incapable of telling a like or concocting a fiction.”

“Fr. Blas went as far as to categorically state that Teresita Castillo belongs to the class of visionaries recognized and respected by the Catholic Church,” Demetriou wrote.

“It is for the foregoing reason or reasons that the CBCP is morally mandated to re-visit and re-examine the validity of the 1951 Diocesan Decree whose facts and conclusions had been rightfully challenged by Fr. Angel de Blas, OP, Archbishop Ramon Arguelles, Archbishop Mariano Gaviola and Bishop Godofredo Padernal.”

Demetriou became famous in 1990’s when as a judge, she tried and convicted Calauan, Laguna Mayor Antonio Sanchez for the murders of students Eileen Sarmenta and Allan Gomez, and sentenced him to seven terms of perpetual imprisonment.

She said she had received death threats during the trial and after the conviction. She added she believed she was shielded from those threats by the Blessed Mother.

JPV