Harriet Obias Demetriou is a Filipino lawyer and retired judge. She served as the chairperson of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) from 1999 to 2001, the first woman to serve in that post. Prior to that, she was an associate justice of the Sandiganbayan, serving from 1995 to 1998. As presiding judge of the Pasig regional trial court, she presided over the trial for the murders of Eileen Sarmenta and Allan Gomez, in which Calauan, Laguna mayor Antonio Sanchez and his accomplices were convicted in 1995.
On March 19, 2024, in a circular, Archbishop Gilbert Garcera of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Lipa stated that "the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith upon the fervent request of Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, revealed the 1951 decree rejecting ‘Lipa apparition’.The letter “in which Sister Mother Mary Cecilia of Jesus, OCD, then the superior of the convent where the known events occurred, confessed guiltily to having deceived the faithful about the alleged apparitions in Lipa and consequently asked for forgiveness” said Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández who further stressed that “This fact definitively and directly confirms the non-supernatural nature of the events in Lipa.”[7] ‘Give me the document, let me examine it. If it’s valid, if it’s really authentic, then I will submit myself. Who am I to fight the Pope?’ Demetriou told Rappler.[8]
