Fortes in Fide, Infirma in Lege
Whoops, Ateneo de Davao president Father Joel Tabora and another priest from Ateneo de Naga, Fr. Wilmer Tria, have both been forced to take a crash course on land registration.
According to the Court of Appeals, the two men of cloth have failed in their attempt to register untitled coconut farms under a foundation set up by the late billionairess Consuelo "Chito" Madrigal.
This is how the case started.
The two priests purchased in 2011 over 5.6 hectares of coconut farmlands from tenants in San Fernando, Camarines Sur, funded by a bequeath from Madrigal for a Bicol foundation bearing her name.
What was supposed to have been a walk in the park - after all, the late Naga City Regional Trial Court Judge Efren Santos in 2017 had already granted their petition to consolidate and register the farms under the Madrigal foundation - turned into an obstacle course after the Office of the Solicitor General intervened.
To make a long story short, the Court of Appeals agreed with the national government's position that the disputed farm lands are still inalienable public lands.
In a decision released last week, Associate Justices Jennifer Joy Chua Ong, Ramon Garcia, and Geraldine Fiel-Macaraig ruled that the claims and tax declarations presented by the settlers-sellers, including the certifications issued by the provincial Land Management Bureau, the Community Environment and the Natural Resources Office, and the Land Management Services, had all been "insufficient to prove that exercise of dominion contemplated by law."
Quoting established jurisprudence, ponente Ong said that in order "to prove open, continuous, exclusive, and notorious possession and occupation in the concept of owner, the claimant must show the nature and extent of cultivation on the subject land, or the number of crops planted or the volume of the produce."
"Mere casual cultivation ... is not the nature of possession and occupation required by law," Ong added, again quoting previous Supreme Court decisions.
Incidentally, Ong and Garcia were both Ateneans, while Fiel-Macaraig, a UP Law graduate, was a career OSG officer before she was appointed to the judiciary.
If Ong's name rings a bell, it is because she was until January an undersecretary with the Office of the President, a townmate of Digong no less.
(The decision may be read under case number CA-G.R. CV No. 114417.)
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