Priest battled with Satan

Ottawa-area cleric helped the possessed find deliverance from demonic oppression

By DEBORAH GYAPONG
Canadian Catholic News
Ottawa

While not every person who dabbles in the occult ends up spiritually obsessed, even a trip to a fortune teller can open one up to demonic oppression, says an Ottawa area priest.

He believes because he has helped people find deliverance from demonic obsession and harassment.

"You're simply asking for trouble," says the priest. "What are you doing? You're looking for knowledge or power from a source other than God. You've invited stuff in."

Recipe for cleansing

But through the renunciation of sins and occult activities, Confession and prayer, "the stuff lifts instantly," he says.

The priest, who asked that his name be kept confidential, recalls the days in the late 1970s to mid-1980s when, in another diocese, he served on a prayer team helping people find deliverance.

Father "Mike" says that traumatic and frightening experiences, long-term unrepentant sin patterns, drug and alcohol use can also open some people up to demonic obsession. So can activities and sins of previous generations in a family.

"We are going to be walking through some pretty awful stuff. All over the place evil is flaunted," Father Mike says, noting especially the explosion of pornography.

"Good people get weighed down," he says.

He says people are ignorant about how demonic oppression can bring obsessions, depression and other forms of spiritual harassment.

Father Mike says the scariest thing that happened in those years occurred when a man seeking help was seated in a heavy oak chair with solid wood armrests.

Once the prayers started, the chair lifted about six to eight inches off the ground and began to bounce. The team members had to hook their feet over the chair rungs to hold it in place.

Father Mike found it terrifying, but the team kept praying.

The man in the chair at one point told the team he was tired and wanted to take a break and go home.

They knew it was the evil spirit trying to distract them, so they kept going.

Five hours later, the man was free and "mercifully" had no memory of what had taken place.

Father Mike says that he did not do exorcisms because the level of demonic involvement and possession requiring an exorcism is deeper than obsession - which he describes as harassment from within.

A priest needs specific permission of the diocesan bishop to use the exorcism rite.

Father Mike and his team, which included another priest and a laywoman, operated with the knowledge and permission of the two bishops who served in that other diocese during the late '70s to mid-'80s.

Father Mike says he "fell into" the deliverance ministry, and one reason why he wishes to remain anonymous is that he no longer does this kind of work.

"It's not something you do for fun," he says. "You get dragged in.

"You do it because someone you know is suffering. I don't go looking for trouble."

He learned about deliverance prayer while active in the charismatic movement and believes that most other Canadian Catholic priests who have experience in this area also come from that movement.

He says that much ignorance and lack of awareness surrounds the role of the demonic in mental health, and "sometimes people were simply sent off to a psychiatrist," when they had a spiritual problem.

"I think it (deliverance) is part of the healing ministry," Father Mike says.

In fact, when Father Mike was serving near a mental hospital, two or three psychiatrists began sending some of their patients for deliverance prayer because of the success of the prayer team.

Psychiatric referral

One psychiatrist brought a patient he'd been treating for seven years without much success, and watched that individual undergo "a tremendous change in three hours," Father Mike says.

Father Mike says that great discernment is necessary to determine when a problem has a spiritual origin and when it's simply mental illness.

That's why he thinks it is wise for anyone doing this to work in a team.

"We have made distinctions that don't stand up," he says. "We want clear categories. There's no reason evil would not be interested in someone who is already disturbed.

"It's not always one or the other. More often it's a combination."

Father Mike says a good deliverance team does a lot of teaching about the faith. He says God is not interested in delivering people so they can continue sinning, but so that they might serve him.

"You can't continue to sleep around, and do drugs," he said.

"There's quite a bit of teaching. We have to teach the faith. Many have not learned about the faith."

Some people want to hold onto their sin. They can't be helped.

Father Mike once counselled a woman who hated her husband. He told her she would have to forgive him if she was to be free.

"Oh no, I couldn't do that," she said, with a chilling smile. "That is all I have to live on."

"She got up and left and I have never felt so much in the presence of evil."

After the prayer team would interview a person to discern where the problem areas lay and what needed healing, the team members would hold a crucifix in front of the person and begin to pray and address the spirits.

Cross = truth

They would tell the person to look at the crucifix, but when the evil spirits were being addressed, the person's head might fall to the side.

"Evil spirits will not look at a crucifix," Father Mike says. "It symbolizes defeat.

"Symbols have a certain life. They represent the truth."

Terrorized eyes

"We would see absolute terror in the eyes of people when addressing spirits.

"We'd see their heads go sideways. We would continue to do that and be praying. We'd keep doing it until we knew the stuff was gone."

The prayer sessions would take sometimes an hour, sometimes five. When they would encounter a roadblock, the team would go into the church and pray, asking God what to do next.

In most cases, the person prayed for felt dramatic effects, and felt "something real." "In some cases, the changes were visible. They no longer looked the same."

Father Mike says they told some who'd been prayed for that they might continue to hear voices afterwards, but now the voices were "on the outside" and not on the inside.

"They are liars. Don't listen to them. They're trying to frighten you," Father Mike would tell them.

Each case was different, though, so no set deliverance pattern developed. He found the work "rewarding, but exhausting."

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