G.R. No. 8612. November 09, 1914
RUPERTO EDRALIN, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLANT, VS. GERMANA VIERNES ET AL., DEFENDANTS AND APPELLEES.
ARELLANO, C.J.:
parcel of land the description whereof is given therein and considered as here
reproduced. Germana Viernes answered by alleging that the land claimed from her
is not and never has been the plaintiff’s, but belongs to the Roman Catholic
Church in its parish of Bacarra, Ilocos Norte, to which constantly for over
thirty years she, her husband, and their children have been paying a yearly
rental on the lease by virtue whereof they have been possessing it. The parish
priest of Bacarra intervened and was included as a defendant in the case.
This land originally belonged to Fausto Albano, who in July 1879, bequeathed
it to the parish of Bacarra for a series of masses, as appears from the copy of
his will, which is a valid document, not impugned either in or outside of this
case. Moreover the witnesses presented by the defendants corroborate the fact
and the title of possession, as well on the part of the lessor parish as on the
part of the lessee family.
The plaintiff absolutely lacks an original title to the land he claims. It
seems that he fabricated a title in the following way. He declared it for
assessment, changing a boundary or two. He failed to pay the land tax, wherefore
the land was put up at public auction. He bought it in himself with a bid of 49
centimos, and in a year there was executed in his favor an instrument of sale of
said land, over 50 ares in area, for the price of 49 centimos. This is the title
(Exhibit A) he has presented. This plaintiff was a half or uterine brother of
the legator Fausto Albano, and was like him a Catholic, well informed about the
church’s property, as he was the agent for collecting the rental for the parish.
But he went to the so-called Independent Church and it seems that his idea was,
that between one church and the other it would be better for the independent one
to enjoy it. It was so held in the judgment appealed from when the statement was
made therein that the plaintiff “claims that the donation be now made to the
Independent Filipino Church instead of the Roman, which is improper, for that
church did not exist and £he will must undoubtedly have referred to the Roman,
which was at that time the only church in Bacarra, and with this claim Ruperto
Edralin in 1909 made judicial demand for himself for paddy (the rental) and now
for the land itself, bringing forward an instrument that does not refer to the
land in question.”(B. of E.,11.)
The claim must have arisen from the
fact, attested by Germana Viernes and Luis Albano, that when the Spanish curates
ceased to administer the parish of Bacarra they were succeeded therein by the
Filipino curates Ignacio Noriega, Servando Castro, and Atanasio Albano, during
whose administration, or at least that of the first two, he was the agent for
the collection of the rental the lessees of the land paid, and he must have
ceased to be a collector. If after 1903 (Exhibit A) he was the owner of the land
that he had bought at public auction for the price of 49 centimos, it is
inexplicable why he continued to act as collector of the rental in the name of
the parish priests Noriega and Castro, who, as was proven at the trial, were
Aglipayans, and it did not occur to him until December of 1910 to enforce that
title of purchase for the price of 49 centimos, and not in 1909, to have brought
an action to recover the rental from the same defendant he now sues for
ownership, an action which failed.
Such are the facts that have twice occupied the attention of this court by
reason of that variation in the boundaries. It is a notoriously impudent claim,
devoid of any basis.
The judgment appealed from, whereby the defendants are absolved from the
complaint, is affirmed with the costs and it is held that the land claimed is
the exclusive property of the Roman Church; with the costs of this instance
moreover against the appellant.
Torres, Johnson, Carson, Moreland, and Araullo, JJ.,
concur.