Delicate Question

When 26-year-old Father Hermogenes Coronel came to the sleepy little parish of San Rafael in 1940, no one welcomed him more heartily than Alfredo Musni. The priest took a room in Alfredo's house, became fast friends with Alfredo, his wife and his daughter Gloria. Later, Father Coronel and Alfredo's brother-in-law entered a business partnership to found the San Rafael Academy. In 1946, Alfred Musni enrolled blooming 18-year-old Gloria in Father Coronel's school.

Last week, the Musni family and Father Coronel, friends no longer, were glaring at each other across a Manila courtroom while a judge weighed the legal answer to a delicate question that had disturbed the whole Philippine Republic: Was Father Coronel legally married to Gloria Musni?

"So I Hit Her." Father Coronel's own answer was an emphatic no. True, he told the court, he and Gloria had gone through a marriage ceremony before a justice of the peace in 1948, but there were at least two invalidating circumstances: i) the marriage was never consummated; 2) Alfredo Musni was holding a gun at his back at the time. After the ceremony, Father Coronel said, he returned to his parish, finally managed to slip away from the ever-watchful Musnis and escape 600 miles away to Zamboanga. Last fall, after church authorities had declared the marriage void, Father Coronel returned to Manila. He filed a suit asking for a civil annulment and financial redress from the Musnis. He was met by the Musnis' countersuit for 100 pesos monthly alimony and 10,000 pesos moral damages. Alfredo Musni gave the following version of Gloria's marriage:

"On Jan. 14, 1948, I arrived in my home on Lealtad Street and found my wife crying. I asked her what was wrong, but she refused to talk, so I hit her. Then she talked. She said Gloria was pregnant and crying in her room. I asked Gloria if this was true and who did it, but she kept quiet. So I hit her. Then my son Nestor arrived and I explained the matter to him. He also hit her. Then she talked. She said it was Father Coronel who did it ... The next morning I went [out] with my son . . . came back in the afternoon with Father Coronel and in the evening they were married."

"Plain Blackmail." Alfredo denied that the marriage of Father Coronel and Gloria was a shotgun affair, claimed instead that the priest himself had suggested that he marry Gloria when he learned she was pregnant. Said Alfredo: "I even asked him how it was possible for a priest to marry, and he said there is no law against it, that in America they do it all the time."

Snapped Father Coronel: "All lies . . . plain blackmail."

Said Judge Gabino Abaya: "This is a hard case. It is not a mere matter between a priest and a woman, but a delicate problem that affects church and state. I want to give it all the time I can."

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