Short answer. It can be. The Revised Penal Code punishes a public officer or employee who prevents or disturbs the ceremonies or manifestations of any religion, with a heavier penalty where violence or threats were used. A private person who disrupts a service is dealt with under different provisions.
What the law says
shall be imposed upon any public officer or employee who shall prevent or disturb the ceremonies or manifestations of any religion
Revised Penal Code, Article 132 — Interruption Of Religious Worship. Read the full provision →
This article is aimed at officials, not congregants
The provision sits among the crimes against the fundamental laws of the State, and that placement explains its shape. It punishes a public officer or employee — someone acting with the authority of government — who prevents or disturbs religious ceremonies or manifestations. The wrong it targets is official interference with worship: a barangay or local official ordering a service stopped, an enforcement officer breaking up a procession, a public employee blocking access to a place of worship without lawful basis. A neighbour who shouts through a mass, or a heckler at a service, is not covered by this article at all, however offensive the conduct.
Every religion, and manifestations outside the building
The words are deliberately broad. Any religion means the protection does not depend on the faith being large, established or popular; a small congregation is covered exactly as a cathedral is. And the article speaks of ceremonies or manifestations, not merely services held inside a church. Processions, open-air worship, funerals conducted according to religious rites, and other public expressions of a faith fall within it. The conduct punished is also broader than stopping the event outright — the article covers disturbing it, so serious interference short of shutting it down is enough.
The penalty and the aggravated form
The basic penalty is prision correccional in its minimum period. If the offence was committed with violence or threats, the penalty rises to prision correccional in its medium and maximum periods. That escalation is the article's own aggravating circumstance: the same act of interference is treated far more seriously where the official used force or intimidation to achieve it. Note that the penalties here are terms of imprisonment rather than fines, so the peso amounts revised across the Code by Republic Act No. 10951 in 2017 do not alter what this article imposes.
What applies when a private person is the disruptor
Where the person causing the disturbance holds no public office, other provisions come into play. The Code separately punishes acts notoriously offensive to the feelings of the faithful committed in a place devoted to religious worship or during a religious ceremony, and ordinary offences — alarms and scandals, unjust vexation, physical injuries, grave threats, malicious mischief — apply on their own terms wherever they happen to be committed. None of this displaces the constitutional guarantee of free exercise, which is the interest all of these rules protect. Whether a particular incident amounts to any of these offences depends closely on who acted, in what capacity, and how, and is best assessed with counsel before a complaint is filed.