Officials of the St. John’s Institute recently revealed Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP) president, Fr. Joel E. Tabora, penned a letter to Bacolod Bishop Patricio Buzon on behalf of the school.

SJI President Benjamin Lopue said the letter, which included input from the group’s canon lawyer, Fr. Adolfo Dacanay, affirmed the school has “no fault” in prompting the diocese to strip them of their Catholic school status.

According to the letter, Tabora referred to SJI as “a Catholic school in good standing.”

“Despite the tensions between the parish and the school in intervening years, the recognition of its catholicity was never withdrawn,” he wrote. “SJI’s formal request that its Queen of Peace Church be returned to the status of school need not be construed as its spurning [of] the Diocese and its valued catholicity, nor as a disrespect for the parish structure itself.”

Tabora added, the action did not warrant the diocese to “pull out” of the school.

In May of last year, Buzon, in Circular Letter no. 2017- 008, stripped SJI of its status as a Catholic school after the SJI Board requested the diocese revert the Queen of Peace Church, located within its school campus, from a parish church to a school chapel.

“To remove the parish from [SJI] is to negate the original intent of the donation, that is to serve the furtherance of the Chinese apostolate,” the bishop responded. “Unfortunately, the [Board of Trustees] of SJI does not agree with our position and has declared that their demand to ‘de-parish’ the Queen of Peace Parish is final and non-negotiable.”

“We never intended to leave [SJI], we are being sent out,” he added.

Tabora, who also serves as Ateneo de Davao University president, said he will bring the matter to the attention of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines Episcopal Commission on Catholic Education./DGB, WDJ