#141 Father Dan Reehil - Inside the Demonic World with an Exorcist
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At Sierra, discover top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery. Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. Father Dan Rehill.

Welcome to the show. Thank you, Sean. Good to be here. It's a pleasure to have you. Thank you. As I said in the EDC, we've been really looking forward to this for a long time. And so I'm really excited to get started here. Thank you. Me too. So what I'd like to do, I got you for about three hours, and I'd like to...

do life story, get into the exorcism stuff. And then I have some personal questions. I grew up Catholic, kind of ventured away from not only the Catholic church, but Christianity as a whole for quite a while. And then recently, I guess a little over a year ago, I had a

I had a very profound experience in Sedona, Arizona of all places, and where I felt like the devil was trying to get me to surrender. I'll just put it in short. And then I had three incidences right off the bat, right after that, where I felt like, I shouldn't say I felt, I know God was speaking to me. Okay. And-

I don't want to go too in depth because we are restricted on time, but I would love to send that episode to you and possibly have a conversation about that later. But anyways, everybody gets a introduction here. So Father Dan Rehill.

You're currently a Catholic priest for a church based out of Columbia, Tennessee, right down the road from here, as well as the exorcist of the Diocese of Nashville. After graduating college, you worked in global trade and finance in Manhattan before entering the spiritual brotherhood and then finally onto the priesthood.

You're the host of the podcast Battle Ready, where you answer questions from callers about the spiritual realm and the Catholic catechesis. Catechesis. Sorry. It's all right. You have been on several podcasts and other news programs to discuss the dangers of demons in the modern world today.

And so I am very, very excited to dive into that. One thing we have here is Sean Ryan Show. We have a Patreon. It's a subscription account. They're our top supporters. A lot of them have been with us since the very, very beginning. And so one thing I like to do is offer them an opportunity to ask each guest a question.

And there are some good ones here. I'm going to save some of them for later on in the interview. Okay. This is from Al. I love the quote you once said, protect your mornings. It's a very profound quote, and I carry that with me every day. How does one protect your morning? Well, for me, the day gets away from me pretty quickly as it goes on. The sun goes up, and anything can happen, you know? Somebody could be dying. It happens constantly.

Quite often we have a hospital in Colombia, so all the surrounding areas, maybe 30 miles out, especially going south, their people go there and at least once or twice a week somebody's dying and needs me to go right away to give them the last rates.

I don't do exorcism on demand, but I will meet with somebody if they're suffering, at least try to relieve some of the suffering before I get them on a spiritual regimen. And that could just, they show up at the church randomly. You never know when they're going to show up. And then there's spiritual direction appointments day in and day out and all sorts of other things. So my morning, when I say protected, I go over to the church at 5.30 a.m.

Get up at 4:20, get over there by 5:30. And then I have exposition of the Blessed Sacrament until eight o'clock. The last half hour I have confessions, we do benediction, then we have mass, and then I go on radio at nine and that's till 9:30. And so the morning is set. And usually nobody disrupts that prayer time in the morning, so I know it's gonna happen. And I need it, I need it because

It's not me that goes out into the day to help these people. It's God, and he works through me. But it's his grace. It's his power. And if I don't get filled up on him, I'm kind of worthless for the rest of the day. And then I'm just really a social worker. Thank you for answering that. I have some personal questions. One of them is there's not going to be a good time to ask this during the interview, I don't think. Shoot. I have...

So I told you I had left the church and I'm new back into Christianity about a year. Same. A little more than a year. Picked through the Bible. And...

And, you know, the one thing that, and so we started a Bible study at my house. And it's four families. We're very, very, very close to each other. And one of the guy that leads it is a former pastor there.

who I think kind of got ran out because he said that pastors shouldn't be focused on money. They should be focused on spreading the word. And a lot of people around here didn't like that, I guess. So now he leads our thing. And the one thing that I think the thing that resonates with me the most

out of what I've learned so far, maybe not the most, but it always sticks out in my head and I talk about it all the time, is that from what he says, the church is not a brick and mortar building. It is the living body of believers in Jesus Christ. And so that is something I never heard growing up as a Catholic. And so I just wanted to

I wanted to see what you think about that. - That is very true. If you think about the church, when Jesus chose these 12 men to go out and make disciples of all nations, when he ascended to heaven and they took up this mission, and it was a big mission, imagine, and they're not particularly qualified either, mostly fishermen.

They go forth, but now they have the Holy Spirit because the Pentecost has happened and they are set ablaze with the Spirit. The same Spirit that led Jesus his whole 33 years is now in those men. And it's now in us if we're baptized, particularly if you got confirmed too. You get sealed with that Spirit, same Spirit. And they go forth, but there's also a persecution happening because the leaders of Jerusalem and you could even say in Rome and all over the world, they don't want this new religion anymore.

So if they catch you, you die. So the first, I think 32, 33 popes were all martyred. So if they said to you, we just elected you pope, it was a way of saying you're about to die because they're killing everybody. And now you're a public figure that says you're leading this new church.

And as such, there were no brick and mortar churches because how could you build the church? It'd be the big red flag. Here's where we worship. Come and kill us. So for maybe three, four hundred years, there was no brick and mortar church. They were in people's homes. But they were celebrating the Mass the way that Jesus did at the Last Supper. So they were taking the bread and the wine, praying the prayers of consecration, and turning it into his body and blood. And that was what was sustaining them. And that was giving them life.

even the graces to die for Jesus and his cause, this church, that people would, the blood of the martyrs is the kind of the seed that spurns on the church to go forward. So yeah, that's absolutely correct. Once you have Constantine come on the scene and basically took up Christianity as the religion of the kingdom, and he put the cross on all the flag bearing, the flags and the,

when he would go into battle, then they knew they could build churches because the king would protect them, the Roman emperor would protect them. And that's when the churches got built and they've continued to build them ever since. But you go into countries like in the Middle East that are Muslim, there's still a lot of underground churches where there's no, it's just in people's homes because they know if we're discovered, it could be a big problem. Is there, you know, another thing is, you talked about

My Megyn Kelly podcast and some of the things that we discussed in there. Middleman. That's where I'm going. Good. I'm a middleman. Did you know that? I did. I'm a middleman. I did. And no priest, no Eucharist. Good. No priest, no confession. Good. It would be terrible. It would be terrible. But if you want to go back to scripturally, Moses was a huge middleman.

I mean, he was constantly interceding for those people, you know, and it was only by Moses' prayers that God was, we relent and, you know, take them back into his custody, his shelter of his protection. But does God need a middleman? Of course not. He can do anything.

But what we've come to know and learn, particularly through his son, is that he's a family guy. The very Trinity is its own family. And he was perfect before he created anything. And he was completely content. Didn't need to do anything. But because he has this overwhelming, magnificent, overflowing love, he wanted to create children. And he wanted to build a stage for them. That's the universe. And he put everything under the domain of man. Everything was all under Adam and Eve.

But Adam and Eve were made for God. That was his special creation. This is the reason Lucifer rebelled, because he heard of this plan and he was so disgusted that a person of the Trinity would take on human flesh, which was considered much lower than the angels, humans, because pure spirit is a lot higher perfection in form than the material creation of a body.

That's why they rebelled. Yet Jesus went forth with this plan anyway, and he does take on human flesh. And when he ascended to the throne of God in heaven, now there's a person with a human body sitting on the throne of God. And that's how much he loves us as people. Did you ever think about that? Like, it's us. There's one of us sitting on the throne now. Like, he left as pure spirit. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. He ascended back with a body which will forever be his body. That's how much he loves us.

And so when I hear people, I don't know why Jesus is so hated. I don't know why he's so misunderstood. I've prayed about this and pondered this for months and months and months because he never did anything wrong. Like, why is there so much hatred of this man? And I think it boils down to two categories. I think there's ignorance or apathy.

And, you know, and I've asked people at conferences that I go and do missions, and I would say, do you know what the difference between ignorance and apathy? And, you know, frequently there's always somebody who goes, I don't know and I don't care. And I'm like, exactly, that's the difference. Ignorance is I don't know, and apathy is I don't care. And I think those two categories are growing more and more as the world is barreling towards this precipice of hell. More and more people say, I'm a nun.

I don't participate in religion, N-O-N-E, not the sisters. And they think that that protects them, like, I'm good, I'm not getting involved with this. But Jesus told us, if you're not with me, you're against me. Do you think that maybe Jesus is so hated because elites are threatened by a higher power? Definitely, it's one of the reasons. I mean, I think if you look at the global religions, of course,

and I'm not saying Muslims hate Jesus, but what they do is they deny who he is. They say he's a great prophet. Well, he said he was the son of God, so he's either a liar or he's God. He can't be a great prophet, 'cause a great prophet doesn't lie. But they haven't really thought it through. The Jews are still waiting for the return of the Messiah, so they're also in a different kind of camp, like, well, that's not our guy.

But what if you miss the boat? I mean, the temple's gone. It's over. What are you waiting for? Like, if you really thought about it, you'd have to say, maybe we did miss this. When you talk about, when you were just talking, we were just talking about Adam and Eve and Lucifer. So before Adam and Eve, where did all the, where did the angels come from?

So we believe as Catholics that before the created matter of the universe, the stuff that we can touch, he created all the angels in one single moment. And Aquinas writes a lot about this.

But he had to give them a way to test their allegiance. And so this plan of God with man was kind of in some way leaked or shown. And that's when they said, we will not serve this cause. A third of them, we think. We don't know. It's not a science. And there's no scriptural definition of how many. But we know Lucifer fell for sure. That's written in the Bible. And he took, as Revelation says, he took a third of the stars with him. And these luminaries we assume to be the angels.

incredibly intelligent, incredibly powerful beings, but they don't have bodies. Pure spirit, just like God. Then he creates all of us, and we're kind of a hybrid because we're not pure matter, but we're not pure spirit. We are both matter and spirit. So we're unique in that way, in the way nothing else in creation is like us. And as I mentioned, he kind of

If you think about all God did for us, you know, he made us out of his love for us. So in that, just for that reason alone, we kind of owe him something. I mean, he made me. If you go and you create a vase, you make this vase and put it on a shelf, like if the vase had a person on it, it would have to say, "Thank you for making me." But you know, it's a vase. It doesn't know what to do. It has no mind. But we know that we were made by something. So just for that purpose alone, we owe him a debt. And then because of the sin of man, and we all sin,

Jesus came to redeem us and died a horrible death and for 33 years kind of showed us how to be a good person, how to be a good human being. Even though he's divine, he's fully human as well. And then he offers his life on the cross to the Father for all the sins we committed and he buys us back from the devil. We were literally owned by the devil. So there's another reason we owe him, right?

People don't like the word "oh," but justice is real. And you can't have a world without justice. Justice is giving the other person what they're due. It's not a negative. If you say, "I'm going to sell my car for $5,000. Here's the $5,000." You get the car, justice has been served. Similarly, if I rob a bank and get caught and the penalty is 10 years in prison, I go do the 10 years in prison, justice is served.

When it comes to God, giving God what he's due, we can't do because we are incapable of giving back what he gave to us because it's so great. We're not capable. We're creatures that can't do the level of love that he's given to us.

And so religion by definition is the justice we give back to God. That's what we call religion. It's part of the justice virtue. - Okay. - And it's just giving back what he wants. And he was very clear how he wanted to be worshiped in the Old Testament. And then when Jesus created the new covenant at the Last Supper, he was very clear that this is how I want you to worship. Do this in memory of me. And we've been doing it ever since.

Now, as I mentioned before you came up to do the interview to one of your staff, you know, when it got established in the Old Testament, he was very systematically clear about how he wanted to be worshipped. There would be an altar, a priest, a sacrifice, and blood.

And then they would take the blood and sprinkle it on the altar. They would take the blood and sprinkle it on the people. And this was the way he said we're going to do worship. Very messy. I mean, imagine when you go to Mass, they sprinkle the holy water on the Easter vigil. Imagine if I'm sprinkling blood on people. You know, it's incredible. Like, you never would forget that. You'd be like, wow, that was intense. And— What kind of blood? The animal's blood. Bulls, goats, lambs, oxen. A lot of blood. Tons. Tons.

they would collect it in these bowls and half would go on the altar and half would get sprinkled over the people. Why blood from an animal? Because the Jews always believed the life was in the blood. Okay. They were offering this life as atonement. They had no way to have sins forgiven, but they would at least follow the regimen the Lord gave them to do the worship. And that was their way of obeying. Why do we have to obey? Why did God allow evil to happen?

There had to be something in the garden that was forbidding from Adam and Eve in order that they could show that out of love for God, they would obey him. That's the only way you can show you love somebody is by actually doing what they ask you to do. If there was no rule at all, how do you know? How do you know if you're really gonna step up and love him? It's the same with like your kids. If you say to them, please don't do this, this, and this,

primarily because it would be bad for you and it could hurt you, but also respect your mom and dad. Don't do that. And then they don't do it because they love you, and that's how you know they're actually giving you the respect that you deserve. So that's why God put that tree in the center of the garden and said, do not touch or eat of that fruit. They could have everything else, and there was no work back then. Everything grew on its own. Everything was perfect. They walked with God every afternoon in the breezy time of the day. But the deception of the devil was,

First of all, he starts talking to Eve and he goes, did God really say you cannot eat of any fruit in the garden? So he twists what God said. She goes, no, he didn't say any. He said just that fruit. And then the serpent goes, oh no, surely you will not die. Your eyes will be opened. You will be like God. So now Eve, for the first time, and she's completely happy up to this point. She has no wants in her life. She thinks now suddenly God's holding out on her, that there's something that's going to make her more happy if she gets it. And he tricks her.

and the serpent gets her to eat it, and she gives some to Adam. He eats it, and then their eyes are open. They realize they've committed the worst possible sin they could do, and it drags all of us down. But God doesn't despair there. He has a plan. It's a rescue mission. You'd be familiar with rescue missions. This was the greatest rescue mission of all time, when Jesus is going to come into the world, and he's going to take down the devil on a different kind of tree, on a cross. So where the first sin entered the world from a tree,

Now redemption comes to her tree. Where Eve fell, the Blessed Mother brings forth a new plant by saying yes to God and allowing the second person tree to become incarnate in her womb. And so you can see the parallels of like these first parents and now this new, the new Adam and the new Eve is Mary and Jesus. Thank you. You're welcome. When I was in the SEAL teams, I loved to dip. I spent a lot of time on operations and dipping was a ritual.

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bunker.life. That's bunker, B-U-N-K-R dot life. Use offer code SRS for 25% off, making it less than a dollar a month. Download Bunker today. Just a little bit ago, you had mentioned, we were talking about the middleman and you were talking, you had mentioned without, without the priest, there is no Eucharist and there is no confession. Yeah. So,

From what I've learned, we've already been forgiven. And that was part of Jesus on the cross. We've all been forgiven. And so, is it, can I not ask for forgiveness in my own home? - You can. - What is the difference? - Well, you actually know you've been forgiven. That's the difference. And we are set free through baptism from being under the domain of Satan. He's like a lawyer.

He's a legalist and he knows where his boundaries extend and where they stop. The minute we're baptized, this is what I tell parents all the time, please don't wait for Aunt Sally to fly in in three months for the baptism, just baptize the kid right away. Because that restores that person back to God and out from under Satan's foot, literally stepping on the person's neck. And they have them by chains. And legally they own the person until that kid's baptized or they're adult. Once you're baptized, we're completely set free as you mentioned.

until we sin again. And then if we commit another mortal sin, we go right back under the domain of Satan and we're trapped until we get forgiven, which we know if you go to a priest and the priest absolves you, that has taken place and you're now set free again. And any demons that are attached to you are broken off you and you can feel the heaviness lift. The church also states that you can have perfect contrition for your sins, which would also bring forth an absolution of your sin. But to have perfect contrition

Contrition means you have no attachment to sin anymore. Very difficult to do, very difficult to measure. And so I'm always like, it's not that hard, just go to confession. In my church, it's always anonymous. I'm in one room, you're in another, there's a screen between us, I can't see you. I can hear you, but I don't know who you are. So it really is more like God's doing it through his priest. The other reason that the church says we need to do this is because when we sin, it's not just against God, it's against humanity.

as witnessed by Adam and Eve, who dragged us all into this with them. So through the priest, we're actually getting absolved by God, but also there's coming an absolution of sorts, you could say, or a forgiveness that's also coming from humanity in the person of the priest. Okay. You know, in the first centuries, after the churches started being built, confessions were public. They were public. You had to go stand on the steps of the church and confess your sins to the priest in front of the whole community. Right.

And then he absolved you. I mean, a lot harder, clearly. Wow. Just think about that. There's people that would say, I'm just not going to confession. Yeah. Because I don't want the people to know when I did this. Yeah. But so it's not, it really isn't as bad as people make it out to be. It's a simple thing. It's for your own benefit. And I, as the beneficiary of this sacrament as well, I was away 22 years. And when I went to that confession and he absolved me of 22 years of really deep-seated, horrible, salty sins,

I felt like a new person. Like, I can't even describe how much you're just like, wow. Like, that's a real thing. It's not just a formula with the manner and form. Like, I am new. And a lot of people you see out there, including in the media, when you have mortal sin on your soul, it's literally a blockage to God's grace. And you can't really see truth for what it is. And this is, I believe, why there's such an attack on truth right now.

is because I think a lot of these people believe what they're saying, but it's so twisted and distorted that a lot of us just look and go, how can you think you can assign your own gender? Yeah. Like, it doesn't even make sense. Yeah. But they really, when you listen to them, I think they really believe it. And that's like when Paul's speaking to the Galatians. This is what my opinion is. And he says, oh, stupid Galatians, who has bewitched you? What has happened to you?

Like, I feel like we could say that about America right now. Oh, stupid Americans, who's bewitched you? What's going on here? Yeah. Like, wake up. Yeah. I'm with you on that. I am 100% with you. When we're talking about Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit, let me give you some more context. I have found a tremendous amount of healing from psychedelics.

very controversial subject within Christianity, Catholicism, probably anybody who has some type of a religious background. And I have really good friends of mine that advise against it. I have really good friends of mine that are 100% in on it.

I've had nothing bad come to me from it. - Praise God. - I've quit drinking 100% clean from alcohol for over two and a half years now, going on three, and a whole slew of other things. But I'm interested, I've heard that the forbidden fruit may have been psychedelics. Is there any validity to that?

Never heard that, and there's no mention anywhere of what the fruit was. Okay. That's somebody's conjecture and idea. Okay. What is your... Do you feel that... A lot of people also say that psychedelics will open you up to a spiritual realm where demons can...

it kind of like opens you up where demons can get in if you're not careful. I'm just curious, do you have any thoughts on that or is that a topic of discussion? - Well, I know drugs in general are a big open door for spirits, bad spirits. One of my worst cases of possession was a Catholic guy, young guy, maybe 25-ish, up in Nashville, he's out drinking, the bars are closing and he says to his buddies, "Let's go get some drugs." And a guy goes, "Oh, I know a place."

So they go to this house in a neighborhood at like 2 in the morning. Think about this. You're knocking on somebody's door at 2 in the morning. Like, you got to be thinking, this is a little crazy. Who does that? And they open the door. They come in, and it's lit by candle. And there's upside-down crucifixes and pentagrams around on the walls. And I said to this young man, you know, when I'm interviewing, I go, like, what happened to your spidey senses? Like, nothing went off when you saw this stuff? He's like, I just wanted the drugs.

So he gets some, I think it was crack. As soon as he smoked it, he felt the demon enter him. And that was the beginning of about a six-month ordeal to get it out. And he knows it happened from the drug because the drug probably had a curse on it to attach demons to it. So if you're buying, well, I would have said years ago, if you're buying stuff off the street, you don't know what you're getting, truly, both in the natural and supernatural. But I would add today,

Some of these pharmaceutical stuff, same thing. Yeah. You don't know what you're getting. I mean, I don't know, though. Is it really considered a drug? I mean, because America's put that stipulation on it? Or is it a medicine that comes from nature? And so if it is a medicine that comes from nature that people are finding healing from, I don't understand that it is from God.

Correct. I mean, there's no additives, there's no chemicals, there's no none of that that's being injected in it. It is simply, was it, I believe it was at the, was it the Reagan administration? I think it was the Reagan administration, maybe, that kind of, maybe Nixon, I'm off on this, but a president basically

There was, because of the hippie movement and the abuse. - It was Reagan. - They, I mean, they scheduled it as some type of a drug or narcotic. But, I mean, coming out with all the research, I'm going too heavy into this, it's helping a lot of people. And so I'm,

I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. It's kind of out of my realm. Okay. I'm not an expert on drug use. We do have a priest in the diocese who wrote his dissertation on marijuana, so he might be a better one to talk about that. But, you know, I think in general the fear is that if particularly the youth who they don't have a lot of restrictions in thinking yet,

the danger is are they just going to go in too quick and too hard and damage themselves? If you're a 40-year-old man who is using this under a self-imposed set of guidelines and you're monitoring what you're doing and you're careful, completely different than a kid just taking a bunch of pills and hoping something good happens. Makes sense. Makes sense.

All right, well, let's get into your story now. Okay. Now that I got at least a couple of my random questions answered. But before we do, everybody gets a gift. I got the gift. Thank you. That was the other gift. The other gift. What do we have here? Those are Vigilance League gummy bears made in the U.S. There's nothing weird in them. It's just candy. Candy. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. And then...

You know, downstairs you had asked, we were talking about rosaries and I told you I still have mine. So I have a really good friend, his name's Dom Razo. And he is a former SEAL, SEAL Team Six guy, and has been a good friend to me and a spiritual mentor of mine and a very devout Catholic. And so...

I bring this with me everywhere I go. - Good. - To protect me. - Good, good, good. - And every time, and then I give them away and then I have to call Dom and tell him send me another one. But this is a warrior's rosary. - Okay. - And I would love for you to have that. - Thank you. Thank you, buddy. - You're welcome. - Now, I gave you a rosary today. - You did. - So you have one back. Like mine, the one I gave you is from this place called Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

And that rosary was in the room during the apparition of Our Lady to one of the visionaries. At the end of the apparition, she blessed all of the sacramentals in the room. So the rosary that I gave for you and your wife have both been blessed, not just by me with the priestly blessing, but by the Mother of God herself blessed those rosaries. Don't give those away. I won't. Thank you very much. I'll carry that with me everywhere. Good. Thank you.

- All right, Father. So let's get to your life story. Where did you grow up? - Long Island, New York, Williston Park. It's about 18 miles east of Manhattan. - Brothers, sisters? - I'm the oldest of four. Then two years after me is my sister. And then two years after her is my middle brother, Jimmy. And then my little brother, Brian. It was almost 10 years after me. - Did you grow up in a devout Catholic family?

Yes. There really was no devout Catholic in 1965 because Vatican II did such a number on removing the awe and the splendor of God from the mass. And I don't know they did it on purpose, but it definitely was a byproduct where there's a lot of felt and a lot of Jesus loves me and really no firm catechesis in what actually happened.

is our role as Catholics, as Christians, baptized, and what does God want from us, and what does he expect from us, and, you know, it was just love God and do whatever you want, was kind of the message. So, but my parents were good Catholics. We went to Mass every Sunday. They prayed the rosary. They, they were, I remember my, the first time I recognized my dad kneeling at Mass. Like, it's a powerful image to see your father kneeling when he was a New York City fire chief, a big, tough guy, so...

To see him kneel made an impression on me. Has the church come back around? In many ways, yes. Okay. Pope Benedict opened the door to allow the sacrifice of the Mass that took place up to Vatican II, which is the extraordinary form they call it now, which is in Latin where the priest says it's back to the people. But it brings forth a greater reverence in the Mass for a number of reasons, but...

We don't need to go into that. But also, a lot of the priests who are leaning towards the more liberal side of the spectrum and who are lobbying for women priests, who are lobbying for married priests, who are lobbying for all these things, gay marriage, they've pretty much run their cycle and they're about over. And the new priests, the young guys, are going back to the traditional principles of the faith.

And it's the Orthodoxy that never left, but it was really put under the carpet and hidden away for about 40, 50 years. Interesting. Interesting. So was that taught and now it's expiring or is it just how things are? The liberal principles? Yes. Well, the church is definitive on its teaching and it always has been. There can only be men priests because...

They follow what Jesus did. He chose 12 men. There were priestesses in other pagan religions at that time, so it wasn't off the table. He could have done that. His mother is the holiest person that was ever created, who's not divine. She would have been the best priest if you were going to allow anybody, because she's perfect. I mean, she had no sin in her. But he chose, no, these will be these 12. So that's never going to change. Can priests be married? They sure can. We know Peter had a wife. He had a mother-in-law, so he had to have a wife.

And we've had married priests for probably four or five centuries in the church. But after a while, it became an issue for raising families. How do you raise a family if you're just gonna keep picking up people and moving them and they don't own the land, the church owns the land, and how do we distribute the property? It became a big headache. And for many other reasons, the church just said, "We want the priest to be focused on his flock."

specifically, and that's why we're going to impose on him this promise of celibacy. Is there any friction within the church on that, especially in the priesthood? I don't see it. I mean, so in the church, there's the God-imposed rules or laws, and then there's man-imposed, okay? The man-imposed ones can be changed, and that's not a problem.

the ones that God set forth, we are untouchable. We can't change those things. It was through the popes where they decided to embrace celibacy rather than marriage. So that can be changed back with no problem.

The Pope has the authority to do that. And in fact, when we have other priests coming in from other religions, you know, there's a guy named Dwight Longnecker. Father Longnecker was, I think, Episcopalian, and he had a family, but he realized, I want to be part of the Catholic faith. I think this is where the truth resides the most. When we took him into the church,

the holy sea declared that he would be ordained a priest even though he already has a wife and kids. And he'd have to make special provisions to provide for them, but that's fine. Because Peter, we have examples throughout history where it happened. So that can be changed. But you can't change the things that God set forth that cannot be changed. Okay. Okay.

- Makes sense. - Like the fasting before Mass, it used to be Vatican II from midnight till you went to Mass, no food, just water. And then the church said, "Eh, you know, there's people passing out at Masses a lot. Maybe we should make a one-hour fast before," and now that's what it is. - Okay. - 'Cause that was a man-made thing. - Gotcha, gotcha. Back to childhood. - Yeah. - What kind of stuff were you into as a kid? - I was, because I was the firstborn and didn't know anything, I was pretty naive about everything.

I rode my bike, played kickball, baseball, swam on the swim team, you know, played football when I, peewee football then in high school. Mostly just sports and we went outside all day. When it was summer, you just left for the whole day, you came back for dinner and you prayed with all the kids on your block. It was just different, it was completely different than it is now. Were you interested in Catholicism as a child or was it more of a chore?

It was never a chore. I went to church with my family. And, you know, we could actually walk to church. We were that close to the church, a few blocks. But as fate would have it, I was molested by a priest when I was 11. And that changed my trajectory for a long time. I just said, I'm never going back to that place, to a church. And I kind of stuck to it. And I kept it hidden until I was in college. And then I told my parents what had happened. And then it started to make sense because I changed my

dramatically as you can imagine your personality would when it's soul-crushing to be sexually abused by anybody, but when it's a representative of God's church, it just spins way out of control. The devil comes right in and starts telling you God hates you, he never cared about you, your parents hate you, every possible lie, and you don't know what to believe. So I kind of spun out of control. I'm pretty headstrong and have a strong will,

And I just decided this is, no one's going to hurt me like that again. Joined the football team, lifted a ton of weights for a long time to become as big as I could. And then thinking that would be, you know, I'll be strong enough where I can defend. And once you become a man, you kind of don't have to worry about those sort of things. But... Can we rewind? Yeah. How did that happen?

This priest claimed he was, you know, kind of doing spiritual retreats for the middle school guys. And with three of us, he took on a retreat overnight. We get there, he's got beer. And, you know, we weren't even into beer. It's like we're at an age where it's like, what are you doing? And that night he sexually assaulted me. But obviously I woke up to him on top of me and, you know, it was not pleasant. And you held that in all the way until college?

Yeah, so... Did you continue to... Did you have to continue to go to that same church? No, I didn't go. I never went. I stopped. And I would just tell my parents, I'm walking to church, I'm going to this mass, bye. And then I would go hang out at the parking lot or the playground. And I did this, you know, I went to Catholic education my whole life, grammar school, high school, college was even Catholic, but I did not go to church. I didn't participate in any of the sacraments.

What did that, I mean, how did you overcome that? I mean, there's so many kids out there, even just on the show. I would say 50% of the guests or more have been through some type of sexual trauma as a child. And so for all the kids that are listening or who are going to go through that, who are going through it, who have been through it, how did you get over that?

I'm not the best example because what I did is not the right way to go. I just shut down God and his church. I kind of went my own way. I rebelled. I became a really bad kid. My parents didn't know what was going on, but they knew something is wrong. But back then, nobody even dreamed this was a possibility. We're talking the 70s.

So they just kept grounding me because I was always out partying and drinking and having fun with the crazy kids. And, you know, college was my ticket out of there where I just get away from this whole thing. But that's where I finally went into it and realized this has to be dealt with. You can't just go through life like this. And I kind of...

Just looked at it objectively, like I guess bad things happen to people who don't deserve them. It happens all the time. I guess I'm a victim of that. But I'm not going to let that be the guiding force in my life. It's an event, but it doesn't have to be the force that's going to shape and mold you. So live your life already. But I was living my life without God, and that's the first mistake. Don't throw God out when something bad happens. It's not his fault. You can't blame God for his cheap labor.

So I would say if you're a kid and something bad has happened to you, tell your parents, regardless of how embarrassing it was or how shameful it was or whatever. They've got to get involved because the only way you're going to get quick help is when they know something has happened. Now, if your parent is part of the problem, if they're abusing you, then you have to get help from somebody else. Go to a teacher. How do you feel that the Catholic Church...

deals with this? I mean, it has been a reoccurring problem within the church. Again, I'm not probably the most informed, but probably more than the lay people. I think a lot of good provisions have been put into place to stop this. But my own case, I was one of 17 from the same priest.

One of 17. So that could have been prevented long ago before I was even, you know, on the horizon there. The bishops kept moving him, and that's what happens, you know. So I blame the bishops. You know, they could have prevented this. And I'm not going to make any excuse for it at all because, like, one kid is enough to say, no, we're not going to let that happen again. Yeah.

But right here in Franklin, I mean, there was just a priest removed a few months ago. So it's still not completely over. And you got to go back to the seminaries and say, you got to have better detection systems when somebody is open to this sort of sexual behavior. There has to be a way to screen it. There has to be. When I first came back to the faith, I found a priest in New York who I really liked. He was a Franciscan friar, the renewal, Fr. Benedict Rochelle.

He also was a psychiatrist. And he told me he'd interviewed probably a thousand priests who did these things to kids, usually in prison. And what he noticed with all of them is they had stopped praying. He would just say, when did you stop praying at your office? It's the one prayer we have to pray every day. We don't have to say Mass every day. We have to pray this set of prayers. It's the only promise we take is to do that in obedience to our bishop.

And they would all say, how did you know? And he said, because I've been interviewing you guys for years now. And it's just, it's the common denominator. Now that doesn't take away the problem. If somebody has an inherent problem that they're attracted to children, even praying is not going to be enough, I don't think. But you can see that that was a factor. They gave up praying and they basically threw in the towel and they gave in to the desires. But there has to be a model that you can be screening in seminary to figure out

I mean, I have to believe they know they have this desire. We know what we want. We know what attracts us, what makes us get aroused. And if that's you, for the sake of the kingdom of God and for your own soul, admit it and get out of there and get help. That has to be an option that they give on day one. If this is something you're attracted to, we want to help you, but you cannot be ordained. Do you think, this was actually a Patreon question, I didn't want to...

I didn't want to kick the interview off that heavy. But do you think that if priests were allowed, if they were allowed to marry, do you think that could, do you think this would solve a greater portion of the problem? No. No. They're not interested with sex with women, clearly. I mean, that's not what they're looking for. Yeah. Yeah.

And no one's going to put themselves into a marriage. And look at the poor woman in a marriage that's a ruse, that's just a shield. The woman's going to know pretty quickly, he's not interested in me. He never wants to sleep with me. So like, what is he looking for then? That's what they were looking for. Well, thank you for sharing that. Sure. I'm sorry that happened. It's kind of an interesting path because when I finally did get the full healing from this thing, and that came when I got into religious life,

And the Lord uses me to bring healing to others. You know, when I first heard God calling me to be a priest, my first reaction was, why would you ask me to do that? Where were you when you heard this? Well, the first time somebody said, I think you're invocating me to be a priest, I was in Medjugorje. I'd just done my 22-year confession with a priest. Uh...

And he absolved me and I felt amazing. And then he says, "I think you have a vocation to be a priest." And I was like, "What? Did you not just listen to that confession? Clearly I'm not called to be a priest." You know, it was a wild days of Wall Street. And he's like, "No, all things are possible with God." But I was just like, "No, you're the priest a little bit, the Looney Tunes." And then I, but when I started,

I came back to New York City, I had to get my life in order because, you know, the conversion's one thing, but now you have to implement it. Part of that was I had to get rid of the bad influences in my life. I had a lot of bad friends who were not good influences, you know, big with the cocaine, big with the partying, had to go. And I joined the Wall Street Young Catholics Association to make new friends with guys that were trying to live virtuous lives. Big 180, just by putting the right people around you. It just, they lift you up. So hold on. So how...

How crazy did it get on Wall Street with you? The life is crazy. I'm just going to leave it at that because I don't want to scandalize the faithful. But, you know, you're living in the biggest city in the world with everything available and you're making a ton of money. You can fill in the blanks. And then I started working for a public relations firm where I was working with both New York corporations, big ones, Citicorp, Chase, Pfizer, but also the celebrity corporations.

So Jennifer Lopez was a client, Tommy Hilfiger, Rolling Stone Magazine's photographer Mark Seliger, and he was introducing me to people like Brad Pitt and Jerry Seinfeld at his parties. And there's just, you know, there's no end to the craziness that goes on in a lot of these circles, okay? I'm not saying any of these people were doing that, but the lifestyle is there, if you want it. So...

I had to make big decisions on reading all that stuff out and just working towards a virtuous life, which would bring forth the peace that I was really looking for. It's just peace. A peace where I just felt good about my life and I wasn't always anxious or angry or just full of all these negative emotions. So here I am.

the Lord, when he asked me, he said, listen, you know, I'm going to use you to bring healing and reparation to people who have been hurt. I was like, oh, well, that's all right. That's kind of an interesting twist. Now I would, today, looking back, I could say, well, that should be every priest. It shouldn't just be a special case, you know, because you got abused. But he was going into that deeper for the abused victims too. And I would find myself in the most ridiculous positions ever.

I was speaking at a prison to 500 murderers and rapists, who by the way, probably 80% of them were sexually abused as kids, and they went into drugs, and then they went into getting the money for those drugs and got involved in all sorts of bad things, where I'm preaching to them my story and telling them that God has a plan for their life too. And I'm watching these big, huge skinhead murderers, and there's just tears coming down because they've never heard this. No one's ever told them this.

that one, God loves them, that two, he has a plan to rescue them and get them free again, and that he's never stopped loving them. Like, they've never heard this. Like, whoa, okay. So this is going on for quite a bit of time. I'm now older. I'm sitting in the chapel one day praying, and the Lord says to me, can I ask you a question? And I'm like, okay, but you've never asked me if you want to ask me a question before. What is this about? If you want to ask me a question, you just ask it.

He goes, "I want you to remember this. I don't want you to ever forget it. So if I could take you back to being 10 years old before you were abused and let you live your life going forward that way, knowing what you know now and knowing that I've healed you completely and knowing how much I've used you already to help people, you're not even ordained, would you change your life?" And I had to think about it and I was like, "No, I'm good because I don't have any of the baggage. I don't have any of the pain.

But I'm seeing how you're using me to help other people. And if this is just the tip of the iceberg, then let's go forward. But it was such an amazing moment where you realize he really can bring goodness out of anything if you let him, if you're willing to be healed and do the work and go forward. Is this a, when God asked you that question, how did it, I mean, how did it happen?

Was it in your head? Yeah, I can hear his voice in my mind. He spoke to me once outside my head, but that only happened once in my life. What was that like? I had been, so I got back to New York City after this conversion, and this priest became my spiritual director. And he said, I want you to start praying every day if the Lord wants you to do something different with your life. So every day I would just pray, Lord, if you want me to do something different with my life, please tell me, and I'm open to it.

And this went on for 18 months. And so finally, on November 5th of 2000, I just went up to receive communion. It was early in the morning. There was really no people around me. And I sat down in my pew, and I heard a voice audibly say, come follow me. And I turned around. There's nobody there. And I was like, oh, it's you.

You know, it's been 18 months. This is the first time you've spoken to me, by the way. And I go, sure, I'm going to follow you. I don't know where we're going, but I'm going to follow you. Let's go do this. And that was the only time I've heard that voice right outside. And then on the inside, inside your head, like what we were just talking about. It's just clear as a bell to me. I just know when he's speaking. I know it's him. This just happened to me actually a week ago. I'm finishing a mission in Cleveland, but it's 80 miles outside of Cleveland.

Was it Cleveland or Pittsburgh? It was Pittsburgh. 80 miles outside of Pittsburgh. And the mass was at 8 a.m. And my flight's at 10.43. And I'm like, this is going to be tight. And the priest that I'm doing the mission for says, maybe you should go at like 7.45 and just miss the mass. Just to be sure. And I'm like, no. I feel like if I believe the most important thing that happens on the planet every day is the mass, I'm going to go to mass. And we'll see what happens. So...

Mass ends at 8.30, we jump in the car, we head out, it starts raining. And I'm like, ugh. Because I hate the airport. It's one of the biggest near occasions of temptation I have is to get so angry at the airport. So I'm just kind of like, okay, what is going on here? So it's very clear we're going to get there very late. And so I start thinking I should probably be rescheduling my flight, booking something later. And I hear the voice say, do you trust me? And I know it's him. And I'm like,

You know I trust you, but there's a practical side to life too. If I roll up and the plane's gone, obviously I'm going to miss it. He goes, do you trust me? I go, yeah. He goes, put your phone away. I'm like, okay, so I'm not going to do the phone thing. We pull up at 10.30 on the dot at the curb.

I have to go into the airport, up two escalators, get through security, get on a train that takes you over to where the terminal is, and then get to my gate, which is like number 43C or something. And I'm just like, impossible. This is never going to happen.

I'm already doubting. And I get up there and I have clear, but there was like 10 people ahead of me and they go every other, it takes forever. And this TSA lady grabs me and goes, just come over here, father. She takes me to the TSA. I don't have to take my shoes off. I don't have to take the belt. I don't have to do anything. She throws my bags on a belt. There's nobody in this lane at all. And she goes, just walk through the thing, go.

And I'm like, what is happening here? And I walk out, grab my bags, I go. The shuttle doors are waiting open. There's nobody on the train but me. And normally they wait for like five minutes to fill up a little. I get on and they shut. And they go zooming to the other end of the terminal. Doors open. And it drops me out at like gate 25. So I'm already just like two gates away. And I get there.

And it's like 10:40. I have three minutes. And the gate is empty. There's nobody there. And there's not even an American rep. And I'm like, "Ugh, just missed it." And the door opens to the flight path to the plane, and it's American guy. He goes, "Hey, he's here. Hold the plane." And he rushes me down the little gangplank onto the plane. I sit in my seat, and we take off. Ten minutes from gate, from the curb to the gate, through security, with a train. Impossible. -Wow. -Impossible.

Wow. Yeah. When he does stuff like that, I shouldn't get amazed, but I do get amazed. I'm like, what? I even took a picture of my watch, and I texted it to the priest that dropped me off because he was apologizing. He's just like, I'm so sorry you missed your flight. And I had a picture of me inside the plane. I'm like, I'm on the plane. He's like, what? Wow. What do you think about reoccurring numbers like 444? Happens to me all the time.

What is that? I don't know for sure, but for me, when I see a triple, it's always Trinity. So I just do a glory be every time I see the three numbers. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Just give God glory. So I would get to the point where like, you know, at like 5.55, I'm like, okay, I'm off the hook now for like 12 hours because there's no 666 on our clocks, you know, clearly. Yeah.

So, and then I'd start seeing it on the microwave, where I'd look over at the microwaves going, and I look over, it's like 0222 as it's counting down. I'm like, oh, so this is gonna happen, this is gonna happen all through the day, I guess. License plates. You know, I'm looking, I see it all the time. For me, it's just give God glory. Be aware of his presence.

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And now I see all these reoccurring numbers all the time. And I looked it up and it said that, you know, this is really interesting, Father, because I had this profound experience, came home, started making phone calls. One of them was to this guy, Eddie Penny, who's also been there for me when I need spiritual advice. And I had a chat with him at night

about and he was talking about guarding it. He was basically saying, he said, "Now that you've chosen a side, things are gonna start happening and not necessarily good things." And he said that you'll be attacked. And the very next morning I had a conversation with a gentleman that works for me, his name's Adam, very devout Catholic, had the exact same conversation again.

And when I looked at my, it just, all these things happened. That conversation with Adam happened at noon. I went home for lunch. I looked at my clock on the way back to the studio. It said 4:44. I looked at the odometer, you know, that you have this much, this many, you have 444 miles left until empty. And this happened four hours and 44 minutes after my conversation with Adam. And so it was like,

"What's going on?" Got here to the studio, Googled it. It said, "We want you to know that your guardian angels," 444 means somebody wants you to know your guardian angels are watching over you at this specific time. And those two conversations prior to that were about guardian angels. And it just, I was like, "Whoa." - Well, all pistons should be firing 'cause today is the feast of the guardian angels.

Say again? Today, October 2nd, in the church is the feast day of the guardian angels. Today, the church honors the guardian angels, October 2nd. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Chances are one out of 365. Wow. Wow. You just, man, that's, I know there are no coincidences. So I don't know if you ever heard this, but like Tim Tebow, remember when he was a,

playing in college, he put the 316 under his eyes for John 316. And of course, the NCAA said, you can't do that. No religious monikers on your person. And he was, you know, okay, I'll be obedient to the league. And then three years later to the day, he was playing, I think, a playoff game for Denver. Was he with Denver? I don't know. I don't remember. But anyway...

His publicist comes up to him at the end of the game, and it's on. He has a video of it. It's amazing. He's like, do you know what today is? He's like, whatever the date is. He's like, no, but it's more than that. This is the three-year anniversary of when you put John 316 on your eyes. And let me just tell you what happened. And there were like a dozen stats on that game. Every one of them was 316. Wow. Like he had 31.6 yards in passing. It was all over the game, everywhere, rushing, rushing.

And this is involving two major teams. You can't orchestrate this. And that's how God just gives you a wink like, I'm in control here. I know what's going on. And I'm thankful you did that for me. And that day, it was the most Googled thing, I think for the week, was John 3.16 on the three-year anniversary. Wow.

Yeah. I love, I just, I always feel like that's a sign that God's just saying, hey, I've got you. Yeah. Don't worry. I'm here. It's like he's playing chess with like a one-year-old and he's 400 moves ahead. It's insane. You can't even like map it out how he does it. I love it when it happens. Me too. I love it when it happens. But you, it sounds like you had some, how do I say this? Some very...

unique, kind of scary events happen in New York. - Well, um... - There were also signs. - So I had the spiritual director at Our Lady of Victory Church. It's on Chase Plaza, of all names. And when he was directing me, he said, you know, first he said, "You're gonna need a director." And I go, "Why?" He goes, "I can just tell. You're gonna need a director." I go, "Is that you?" He's like, "Yeah, I'll do it. So just come back next Friday, we'll start this." He's the one who got me started asking the Lord if I wanna do something different with my life. And

He said, I just want to make you aware because you came out of such a dark place where you really were like one foot in hell, another on a banana peel. And the devil's probably very angry that you got snatched back out of his clutches. So just be aware. He's going to be coming for you. And when you hear that said, you're just kind of like, what are you talking about? Like, because I don't know. So one day, I'm kind of getting tired of my job, even though it was a good job, the public relations job.

And it was getting more and more difficult. Hillary Clinton was running for senator, and she wanted us to handle part of that campaign. And I was like, at this point, I'm just like, I don't really know if I want to represent these people anymore that we have as clients, you know, just for my own personal reasons. And so one of the problems with entertaining these kind of people is it's a big party life, right? So you go out for dinner, and it goes forever, and there's drinking and drinking and drinking.

And I just was getting worn down. And I said to the priest, I said, you know, I'm getting, it's like having a foot in both worlds. I can't do it anymore. I feel like I got to get out of this. And he says, well, just stop the drinking. Just stop the drinking for a month. When you go to the restaurant, go ahead of time and tell the waitress, when I order this, just make it, you know, if it's going to be Jack and Coke, just do Coke for my order and don't tell anybody. And I go, okay, I can do that. And I walk out of the church and standing at the

front of the door, three feet back from the door of the church is this very, very, very handsome guy in this amazing, like you could tell it was like a custom-made suit and everything. He looked like he walked off a magazine. But he's just standing there. That's kind of unusual because New York is like always people are moving. There's nobody standing around alone staring at the church doors. So I made a note of him, walked past him, and I start going towards my office.

And he comes up next to me and grabs me by the arm, which again, nobody does that because you'll get punched in the face. You don't grab people. And I'm like, what are you doing? Get away from me. And he goes, let's get a drink. It's like 10, 30, 11 in the morning. And I'm like, what? I go, get away from me. And I switch directions and then headed home because home was only like two blocks away. I get to my building. I go through the doors. I look back and he's just laughing at me, just like mocking me.

And he leaves, and then I run back to the church, and I get ahold of the Monsignor, and I go, "Let me tell you what just happened." And he goes, "Well, I told you. He's not happy with you, and he's gonna make a play for you. Just be on guard." And I'm like, "Okay, well, you didn't tell me it was gonna be creepy stuff like this." That was weird. He heard our conversation even though he wasn't in the church.

He's like, yeah, he has a lot of power, but God's power is bigger. Don't worry. All right, so that ended. Now I am a seminarian. And I was on break, and my old boss and myself decided to go down to Miami and visit one of our friends who used to be at Citibank with me on Wall Street and is now working the Latin American market for, I think, private banking or something.

And she sets the whole day up. We're going to have kind of a brunch at this place called Nikki Beach, which is, again, one of these very exclusive bottle service, fancy places. We go, we sit down, we order. And the two ladies are looking over my shoulder and they're noticing this guy. They're like, oh my gosh, this guy's so handsome. Look at him. He's amazing.

And I'm not really paying attention until he starts walking over to our table. And then one of them says, oh my gosh, he's coming over here. And I turn around and look, and it's him. Same guy. Are you serious? Same guy. Now he's in a bathing suit. Even better looking than in a suit. And I'm like, only the devil would have the perfect body, right? And he goes to me, what are you doing here? I thought you were going to be a priest. This is my territory. And the girls nod.

Literally, the hair goes up on their back and they're freaked out. Back of their neck. One of them grabs the bill and says, "We have to leave right now." And we go to leave and he just again started laughing at me with the same mocking laugh. Like, you know, "I'm watching you. I can see what you're doing." Probably shouldn't have been there. But lesson learned. You know, now when I encounter him, he's inside people. He doesn't take a physical form like those two other times. What went through your head that second time as soon as you realized

I knew I shouldn't have been there. Like, this isn't a place for a seminary. There was more than just drinking going on. They had little cabanas where people were coupling up and doing things. And all the basic capital sins are happening. Yeah, yeah. So fool me once, shame on me. Interesting. Very interesting. When did, when did, I mean, how did you get into exorcisms?

Well, that's interesting too. You know, after 9/11, I moved up to Boston and I wound up staying with a priest for about nine months and he did deliverance ministry. In fact, the very first weekend I arrived, and I didn't know him that well, but I'm out of luck. I have no job now and now I have no place to live because I was, you know, I was so close. They closed everything under Canal Street. So there was no power, there was no gas, there was no electricity.

And so basically everyone was told, go find a place to live for at least six months because this isn't going to be up and running anytime soon. So this priest invited me up to Boston. I said, I'll go. I go up there. And he was amazing. But he had this ministry. So my first weekend there,

He has this woman in his chapel in the rectory who's slithering across the floor like a snake and foaming at the mouth and her eyes are rolled back in her head. And he's doing all these prayers. And then he looks at his watch and he says, "Okay, I'm gonna go celebrate mass. "I'll be back in an hour, just stay with her." And I'm like, "What?" This is my first introduction to this life.

He leaves, she looks up at me and she's got this weird look in her eyes and she's got the foam coming out of her mouth and I'm like, oh hell no. And I get out of there and I lock her inside and I sat outside and waited for him to come back. When he comes back and he's like, what are you doing? What happened to the lady? I go, no, she's in there. But I'm not staying in there with her. I mean, are you crazy? You left me alone with her.

And he's like, oh, okay. I sometimes forget, for the people who haven't been around this, it's a little jarring. I'm like, a little jarring? Look at her. She looks like a snake. Oh, my gosh. So that was my introduction initially. And then for nine months, he would do this with people, and I got more comfortable in being in the room with him. Like how many times in nine months? Probably one or two a month. One or two a month? Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

And then I went into religious life, and my superior was an exorcist, the exorcist of Omaha. So now I'm in the room, because they usually took the guys who were a little bit bigger to restrain the victim. And I got five years of that. And then when I got to Nashville, the bishop knew I was doing that for the religious community. And he says, you know, I want you to do that here for my diocese. Can you do the deliverance? But he says, I'm not going to make you an exorcist, because...

I feel like that's too big a burden on one priest." And I said, "Okay." And then he died. God rest his soul, Bishop Jobe. And then the new bishop comes in and I don't have his authority because he hasn't given it to me. So as the priests are calling me for help, I keep referring them to him. I said, "I gotta have, he has to give me the authority. I don't do this without being under his protection."

And so he finally connects and he says, you know, why do these priests keep asking for you? I said, I was doing the deliverance for the diocese, but when Bishop Shelby died, I no longer had the authority. So it's up to you. He said, are you the exorcist? I said, no. He didn't want any particular priest to be an exorcist. He thought it was too big a burden. And he says, I don't know, I'm kind of, I kind of feel like you're fighting with your hands tied behind your back. Like, I think you should become the exorcist.

So he sends me to Rome, and I get trained, and then I come back and begin as the exorcist. What does that training consist of? It's intense. It's like... How does it start? I mean, is there an introduction? Welcome to exorcism school? Yeah, it was for like two weeks, six days a week, seven in the morning to seven at night. What is the introduction? What do they say? Well, this is kind of going to be the...

and protocol for what we're going to go into. There's probably about six or seven different fields, you know, biblical, practicums, the devil in Hollywood, the devil in media, the devil, you know, Harry Potter had its own class. Harry Potter? Oh, yeah. So you get finished up. They pair you with a mentor who's been doing this a while, and my mentor was in Indianapolis. And so I met with him on a kind of regular basis, and he took me through some of his cases regularly.

And I watched him do actual exorcisms. And then, you know, eventually you get your first case that you do it. And I'll never forget it. It was in Murfreesboro. Hold on, hold on. Before we get there, how long is the school? It's like two weeks. Two weeks. They put it like two months into two weeks. Is it book work? Is it practical? It's everything. We actually have case studies of actual exorcisms.

exorcisms that have been performed, what happened, what you should do, what you shouldn't do. That class was the best class. Don't do this. So if the victim vomits up anything, including it could be vomit, it could be small frogs, it could be nails, do not touch them, cursed objects, until you liberate the objects from the demons and the curses, and then you can clean them up.

I'm like, I'm not touching anybody's vomit, period. I don't care if you're a demon possessed or not. Like, that's not my thing, you know? I'd be like, could someone come in and help me clean this up? And then knowing that this could actually, you know, you touch it and then suddenly you're covered in boils. Like, it's a whole level of care and attention to dealing with possessed objects. Do they talk about how it happens? How does one get possessed? Yes. Oh, yeah, of course. Yes.

100%. And the two biggest ways are dabbling in the occult and... What does that mean? Playing with demonic things, Ouija boards, going to a psychic, tarot cards, or actual occult worship of the devil. Those are pretty much immediate open doors that you're going to have demons come right in. Psychics are demonic. Yeah, they're not channeling your dead relatives. So right now, we have at least three guardian angels in the room.

There's also probably demons in this room and they're listening and they hear every bit of what we're saying. Excuse me. And when somebody says, well, the psychic told me my mother shared this with me when I was 10 and nobody ever knew that but us. So it has to be my mom, except for the demons in the room who also heard it. And now they're impersonating your mother.

If your mother's in heaven, she's having a good day. She doesn't want to come back and visit you, as much as mothers love their children. If she's in purgatory, she needs our prayers to get her moved into heaven. And if she's in hell, there's no getting out. It's not your mother. Wow. They can put up a good show, and it's very, you know, they can also place thoughts in our minds, and they can manipulate our emotions. And when you have that trifecta, the person is 100% believes it's their mother.

Interesting. And so, how would... So if you're a psychic and I'm getting a reading from you, how does the transmission happen? Well, they're in touch with a demon that's... They may even think it really is a relative. But I think most of them know that there's a power they're tapping into that is dark.

And they're not going to share that with you. In fact, some of them will put Christian statues in the room. You know, Sacred Heart is over here. Our Lady of Fatima is over here. Just to, like, lower the anxiety level of the person coming in. Because a lot of people have heard it's really not a good thing. But they get desperate. You know, when people are desperate or in fear, they do things they wouldn't normally do. So, like, after the Civil War...

these charlatans came up with these talking boards that they were going around and visiting all the widows, saying, I can contact your dead husband, the soldier who died, if you can pay me this amount, we can do it with this talking board. And they made a lot of money off of these poor widows. And then that eventually became what was being known as the Ouija board, which was bought by Hasbro, a toy company, and they're based in Salem,

Massachusetts, the capital of witchcraft. And they have consultants who went into the development of these boards that became Ouija boards. And they are the first to say that they asked the board what its name is. And it said Ouija, which means nothing. And the first year they went to market, the number one board game was Monopoly. And that year, Ouija boards outsold Monopoly by a million boards. So it was embraced by the culture, like fast. And it's opening a portal right into hell.

Interesting. How else can the transmission happen? Well, that's, I mean, that's pretty much it. I mean, for mediums, you mean? No, no, no, no. I'm sorry. To become possessed. Sexual vices, drugs, I mentioned the drugs. But one mortal sin is enough to open the door. I've never seen a case from one mortal sin because it's easy to commit a mortal sin. You know, if you miss mass on Sunday, that's a mortal sin.

But a perpetual and habitual mortal sin is definitely a door opener. So if you're, you know, a married man who's continually having affairs and a womanizer and cheating, that can be an open door.

where suddenly their personality will change and the wife will know something's wrong. She's not even picking up on the affair, she's picking up on now this guy's carrying around these fallen spirits that are changing his personality. He's becoming more angry, he's more judgmental, he's more rotten. And she just thinks, I must be doing something wrong. I don't know what happened to our marriage. Is there any validity, I've talked to

As I mentioned, I talked to a lot of the people that have been on the show have been sexually assaulted. Women have been raped. There's been a lot of discussion about that, that kind of those kind of traumatic experiences on this show. And I've talked to a lot of people that think that demons are kind of passed on through

sexual trauma through rape, through molestation. Is there any validity to that that you know of? Passed on is not the right word. The person doing the raping can have demons and probably does. There's a defection there that they've allowed something and it's now causing them to hurt people. Obviously, it's not natural. But then the person who gets abused...

I wouldn't say those demons are going over to that person. What happens is the person in trauma has a giant wound that needs to be healed. And in every exorcism, in every deliverance, the other side of the coin is healing. There's always a hurt that is occurring with the deliverance. And the healing has to happen before the demon can be cast out. And so if the person never gets the healing...

they can go in through that wound and manifest themselves within that person. They don't like to be disembodied. And so they get into the person through the wound. The person can be very angry at what happened, legitimately. Can be angry at God, legitimately. But if there's never a forgiveness or a healing, that's where they really nestle in and take up house. So it's not the same demon that caused the rape. It's a new set. Well, God, that makes sense.

Let's move on. One more question. How are people selected or are they selected to be possessed? For possession. Again, that's like, there's no science that we can just say this happens all the time or that happens all the time. I think if someone, too much curiosity can be a bad thing. Curiosity is not a virtue. So there's people that spend hours a day on YouTube just digging deeper into darkness.

and occult and black masses and desecration of the Eucharist and all these horrible things. And again, the demons can inflame our passions and put thoughts in our head that can twist things. So we are thinking one thing. I had one guy who was possessed. He went on YouTube and tried to open his third eye through a video and felt the demon go into him through the YouTube video. No disrespect to YouTube, but that's what he did. His name is John. I worked with him for two years.

And we never got him fully liberated. So obviously with the advent of our culture, we all have a phone in our hand now with access to both good and evil. You know, the phone's neutral, but you can use it for bad things and you can get into bad things with it. I would say the reason three times our lady, so back to Medjugorje. Medjugorje is this place where she's been appearing to these six kids since 1981. So 43 years later,

Every day, the Blessed Mother appears to at least three of these children. Three of them have all 10 secrets and only see her once a year. And we don't need to get into the mechanics of all that. But at least three of them are seeing her every day for 43 years. Something is happening. Like if heaven is trying to alert the world that there's a problem like never before. And she said on three occasions in these messages she gives to the world that

Sin is at an all-time high. This is the most evil generation since the inception of man. Worse than the flood. Worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. Now. And I think part of that has to do with the fact that we can instantly communicate with everybody around the world, and we are propagating sin in a way we never used to. If you wanted to have a sexual sin, you had to go do it with somebody. But now we can just open a phone and do things on the phone.

And Los Angeles is California, but mostly Los Angeles, number one exporter of pornography to the whole world. Something like 65% of it's all made in California. We should be not only ashamed of that statistic as Americans, but fearful for the kind of things that they're opening up to the country with that kind of filth with the demonic world.

And then you look at the rest of Hollywood and how there's a lot of other problems. I just saw Nicole Kidman has a new movie coming out who alleges to be Catholic. They almost gave it an X rating. In our day and age, imagine that. So they had to cut stuff to get it down to R. But she has a preoccupation, it's having an affair, but also preoccupation with sex with animals.

So we're going to a whole new level. And this is a mainstream film that teenagers are going to watch and maybe get hooked into something even darker. Okay, this is my issue with Hollywood. Do not tell me you're Catholic and then produce such filth and drag other people into your mess and then come to church on Sunday and sit in the pew. Excuse me. It's not okay. We put up with it with the politicians for long enough, but Hollywood has to be held accountable too. Like, they're hurting the kids. They're hurting them.

And they're opening these doors to horrible things that they should never see. Very, very bad. We'll dive into that deeper in a little bit. Let's move into Murfreesboro, your first one. Okay. So, Mexican girl, probably, I think, probably early 30s. She actually did have a strong prayer life at one point. We never could determine the actual reason. We think it was fear, that she had a fear of,

that was so big that it was consuming her life. And rather than her trust in God, she gave into this fear that we think could be the door that opened to these demons. So the pastor happened to be a very good priest, and he wanted to be present for the exorcism, so he was in the room with me. He had just ordered an enormous, like, eight-foot replica of Our Lady Guadalupe painting that was in this—it was kind of like a storage room—

But we couldn't do it in the church because there were people in the church. And you don't do that. First of all, you don't publicly put somebody through an exorcism where it can be seen by bystanders. But also it could be frightening to the people who don't know that's happening. So we're in this private room. It's my first time, so I hope I know what I'm doing, right? I go through the whole rite. I follow the protocols exactly.

She's on the floor literally struggling. I mean, she's sweating. Her body's being contorted. She's screaming. She's in pain. We're hearing guttural voices of men that are coming out of her. So I know they're also uncomfortable. So in a way, it's working. Except...

We get to the end of the rite where we start doing prayers at Thanksgiving, and I'm like, I look at the priest, and I'm like, obviously she's not liberated. What do you mean the rite? So there's a rite of exorcism. It's an exact formulation of specific prayers in a specific order to deliver the person from the demon. It's not random. In deliverance prayers, I can kind of, I don't want to say wing it, but I can just pray from the heart.

and say, "Lord, in the name of Jesus, I bind all spirits of anger and rage off this person." And I cast them to Jesus for him to deal with them. But in the rite, first of all, the rite has to be done by an exodus only. It can't just be any priest. It has to be delegated by the bishop.

There's protocols to put into place for the protection of the person, like a physical exam beforehand to make sure that they're healthy enough to undergo it. Also a psychological battery that's about a day long. - How do you give a health exam to somebody that's possessed, whose body's contorted? - Well, they send them to the doctor. I don't do that, I'm not a doctor. And the demon isn't manifesting all the time. - Okay. - So some of them, I had a woman right now who, she was working at a Nissan plant by day,

And then at night, she would manifest at home when she's around her husband. But it backed off during the day. I guess they hadn't gotten to the point where they wanted to completely harass her. But now she's in a psych ward because they started acting up at work. And then the boss said, what's wrong with you? I think you need psychological help. And they recommended she go, and she checked into a psych ward. She's not going to get delivered in the psych ward. So I said to the pastor, you know, what do you want me to do? Because she's obviously...

exhausted. It's been over an hour of this torture. And I said, we can stop or I can keep going. And he goes, I don't want to have to go through this again. And I don't think she does either. Let's just keep going and get it over with. Now, both of us were kind of naive, thinking that we can determine when this is going to end. So I start praying and praying and praying again. And then all of a sudden I have this thought, you know, the painting is right behind her, this enormous Guadalupe. And I say to her, I go, look to your mother and ask for her help.

And she turns her head and she looks at the painting and she, in Spanish, she screams out, please mother help me. Set me free from this thing. And then she went into massive convulsions where it was a little frightening. We didn't know what was happening to her. Like, is she dying? And then she's... What do you mean? What did it look like? Like a massive seizure? Like a flash. Yeah, her whole body's flailing and screaming. And like, it's obvious she's, it's not her because it's coming off the floor. It's like...

And both of us are like a little freaked out, the other priest and I. And then all of a sudden it ends and she just lies there. And I'm like, at first I'm like thinking, is she breathing? And then I could see her chest moving. I'm like, okay, she's alive. And then she opened her eyes and she was back. And she's completely set free. And like, I look at the priest and I'm like, holy cow, like had we known we could have like opened with that. Like look to your mother and ask for her help. Like, but what do we know? I mean, I didn't know anything.

But that's how it happened. It wasn't through the right of exorcism. It was from her petitioning Our Lady. What is her response? Who, the girl? When it's gone. Oh, she was thrilled. She was so happy. I mean, is it immediately like... Yes, she knows. She's free. Do they know they're possessed? Yes. Is it emotional? Is it an emotional experience at the end? Yes, because she was so grateful she was set free. I mean, she's crying, but she's happy. She's smiling.

She's covered in sweat, head to toe. I mean, just the most grueling session you can imagine is when they're tormenting the victim physically and they're contorting their body and they're twisting body parts around. It's painful. It's painful to watch, too. Is it emotional for you when it's over? When it's over? No, I'm kind of relieved. But when it's happening...

There's a fine line where I can start getting so angry at the demon that it actually will work against the exorcism because now I'm channeling unhealthy anger, which isn't good. So I have to really remain in check. I can't get violently angry at this thing and start screaming at it because now I'm working in his camp. That's a fine line to tell. Where does the demon go?

Don't know. I mean, when we actually are casting things out, we send them to the feet of Jesus for him to do what he wants with. I mean, maybe the last place they want to go is back to hell because they will be horribly, I don't want to say tortured, but tortured by the devil because they failed their mission. Is hell an actual place or is hell a realm that surrounds us? Uh...

Well, the world's looking more like hell, but I think hell is a place. But again, you know, right now it's souls that would be in hell. It's not physical bodies. But they experience, the spirit can experience more pain than the flesh. This is something a lot of people don't understand. So their torment is worse than what we would experience in this life. And so too, on the flip side, heaven is so much better than this life that people can't imagine. So when people die and come back,

they often don't want to come back. But the Lord's like, no, you got to go back. Because it's just so amazing. I've had people tell me, there's smells we haven't smelled here, good smells. There's colors we haven't seen yet. There's flowers that seem to have their own vitality and life that they move. And it's all in the glory of God. The best description was a person said to me, heaven is real life, right?

the way that a real person is versus the person's shadow. So if you see someone's shadow on the sidewalk, that's this life. One-dimensional gray, that's life on Earth. And then the whole vitality of a human being would be the comparison to heaven versus the shadow. So that's big. It's huge. Let's move into some of the other exorcisms that just really...

were a challenge or stand out to you? The only time I've been physically attacked was once. Again, it was another woman who was manifesting a snake on the floor, crawling like a serpent. I have a guy with me who's supposed to be my bodyguard. And...

Are the bodyguards other priests? No, they can be, but in this case it wasn't. This was another Spanish person who didn't speak English, so I needed a translator as well. So I had this gentleman from the Spanish community who is a good guy. And at one point, as I'm doing my prayers and she's slithering across the floor, her head flies back like that and she's staring at me. And she's sort of got like the snake eyes, which are like, I think...

vertical instead of like ours are this way and there's slits and they're yellow. And I just kind of looked at her and I immediately thought this isn't good. Something is happening. And she flew off the floor without using her hands and her feet and was immediately in front of me and grabbed my stole. So I have a stole on which is a piece of fabric that goes around my neck and she starts choking me.

And she's not a big girl. She's like maybe 120 pounds, but she has a grip that I can't break. So I start looking over to him and I'm like, come on. And he looks at me, he's like, no. And I'm like, are you kidding me? This is your one job. And he's like, I'm not coming in. So I just then focused and I said, in the name of Jesus, stop. And she fell back on the floor and went back to her slithering. And I backed up a few feet and continued walking.

But that's the one and only time I've been physically attacked. How much fear do you feel when you're doing this? None, because my attitude is if God is giving me this ministry to help his people, he's going to show up. And why would he allow them to hurt me unless it's for my own education and learning? Sometimes you learn by mistake. So like that case, I don't know what I did wrong. I think I didn't...

vet the guy in the room with me enough. Maybe the Lord was trying to tell me, you got to pick these people a little more careful. I don't know. I'm friends with a priest who had two 300-pound men in the room with him. And again, it was a woman. And she reached over and with one hand lifted one of the guys between his legs and threw him 10 yards with one hand, 300 pounds. Wow. Yeah, think about that.

So it's not the person's strength. It's clearly supernatural. When you get called to perform an exorcism, I mean, what is the... How does it happen? That's a great question. Because when I first started, I kind of had such a pity for these people, such a sorrow for what they're going through, that I would drop everything and just... That became, you know, come today, we'll help you. Now, having said that, we never do exorcisms at night

in the middle of the woods at somebody's home, which is like what the movies would have you think. It's in the church, usually in the chapel, at my discretion and during the day when there's daylight. You know, we're going to tip the scale in my favor, my territory. But what I was doing was I was getting so caught up in these cases and they were just coming in faster and faster. And I was just spinning my wheels.

So I eventually talked to my mentor and he goes, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's going to wear you out just by sending you fake cases and cases that aren't even real and people that are just there to just tie your time up and make you a big bag of exhaustion." Get on a process. So the process is somebody makes contact with me saying, "I think I have a possessed person or I am a possessed person."

I say, okay, give me your email. I'm going to send you a spiritual intake form. Complete it and send it back to me. Step one. Now, sometimes the person is in such a state they can't do that. And I'm fine. Let your mother do it. Let your brother do it. Let somebody in your family do it.

Then I look at it and I put them on a prayer protocol. If they're Catholic, I want them to come in and go to confession. If they're not Catholic, we will have other things we can do for them. And we start to get them praying and putting order into their life because they're severely disordered. Like at this point, most of them don't have a job. Relationships have folded. They're sitting in their basement just all day long, like having their heads spin with all these crazy thoughts.

Now we're gonna put order back. Order is from God. The demons don't like order. And so just by putting a routine in their life, a lot of times the demons start to back off. And then if they're doing the prayers as I ask them to, and then if they can go to confession if they're Catholic, maybe 50% of the time that breaks whatever was with them off them and they're fine. The ones that need more help,

Then they come in to me for an initial meeting on, you know, what we're going to do for them. And I'll try doing deliverance prayers without the right of exorcism. And if that helps them, and usually it does, then they're kind of set free. But they have to reconnect to God. And this is the point that a lot of people don't want to do. I don't want to go back to church. It's not my thing. Okay, but the person delivering you is Jesus. I'm just standing there in persona.

If you're telling me you don't want to connect with him, then I'm not going to do the ministry because they're going to leave and come back worse when you don't reconnect with God because you're no longer under his umbrella protection. If you're going to hang out over here and you don't come under his umbrella, I'm not doing the ministry because they're just going to whack you even harder when they come back. So we're done. Some of them will then say, okay, I'll go back. But they don't. And then I get another phone call in a month. It's worse. I go, I told you it would be worse. You didn't listen.

Are you serious now? Yes, I'm serious. I'm going to go back to church. Okay, go back and then call me and then we'll start." Because it's not magic, it's relationship. He's got the power. Like I said in the beginning, we want to be his best friend. He wants to be our best friend. What a great deal. The author of salvation wants to be your best friend, the one who has all the power. This is the strong man, Jesus. Why wouldn't you want to be his friend?

And when we are his friend, we're protected. You know, he kind of keeps things at bay and away from us until we go out straying and looking for those things ourselves. So that's a hard thing for people to understand. I had a woman who was so physically crippled by these spirits. She was hunched over like an old lady. She said, I'm not ready to go back to church. All right, good luck. Call me when you're ready.

Another six months she calls, she's practically, you know, can't even move. She's so debilitated. So me and another exorcist went with me to her home. Since I already had met with her, I kind of knew she had a real problem. We brought a witness with us as well, a woman. It's always a woman if it's a woman who needs help. And I do the prayers and she's completely set free. And she stands up and she's fully erect as a normal person. She's not hunched over anymore.

Her countenance is back. Like, she looks like she's peaceful, happy, smiling. Her eyes are bright. Like, it's a different person. And I'm like, how many years ago we should have been doing this and you waited? But thank God you finally did it. But it can be all-consuming. Yeah, it sounds like it. I mean, how do you determine if it's a possession or if it's a mental health issue? Well, the code of Canada laws says I have to have moral certitude.

It's kind of a vague statement. So if they have supernatural strength, we know that's one. So if I see somebody, you know, if I see somebody throw a 300-pound man with one hand, I'm like, that's not her. If they have a deep-seated aversion to things that are holy, that's another telltale sign. There's three of them. That's two. The third one is if they have knowledge of things they could never know. So...

The most obvious cases that probably we've all seen, if you've been doing this long enough, is you can get a 20-year-old person who has a fairly low degree of education. They barely can read and write. And then suddenly during their deliverance prayers, they start screaming at me in Latin. And I'm just like, hold on. I'm pretty sure this little kid here doesn't know Latin or Greek or any other ancient language.

So those would be big signs. For me personally, so like in my break room, the big water jugs, you know, like I don't know how many gallons there are, 20, 30 gallon jugs. The water that I drink is holy water. So I make that holy water. It has the exorcism salt in it. So on the first time I meet an alleged victim, I bring them into the break room and I say, hey, you know, Todd outside, I'm going to get you up some water. You want some water? They almost always say yes because people are basically polite and

even if they're afflicted, and they go to drink the water. If they immediately have a reaction to that water, I know this is real because the person had no idea that was holy water. Probably wouldn't even know what holy water is half the time because they're usually not Catholic. I had a girl take one sip, and she passed out and fell down on the floor completely. I said, okay, bingo, we got one. Wow. So you can do things like this. I also keep a PIX in my pocket. It's a little gold...

I don't know what you'd call it. It's a little case made out of gold. And we put the blessed sacrament in there when we go to see the sick. And then when I'm ministering to that person, I open the picks and I give them Holy Communion. They receive it. And that's what we carry around to bring communion to people. So if I'm interviewing somebody that says they're possessed and about halfway through the interview, I pull out the picks and I open it and they see the host. And then if they start raging and going crazy, I say, okay, you can relax because that's an unconsecrated host. That's a piece of bread.

So I think it's more of a psychological issue you're having, not demonic. Interesting. Because the demon would know. That's just bread. Interesting. Wow. How many is, I mean, in Hollywood, a lot of times we see the demon kind of proclaim who they are. Sometimes it seems like there's multiple demons. Almost always. Almost always. I've never had a case that was one demon.

They're multiple, and the higher up on the totem pole, the quieter they are. The lowest guy is always the one that does the talking until we can get to that top guy. What is the most you've seen? In terms of, I don't know, dozens. In one person? How do you, I mean, so how does it work? Is it one is...

released one by one and the names keep coming? Again, it's not a science like that. Like, they have to follow that protocol. Generally speaking, if the person possessed or has obsession or oppression really wants them out and they renounce whatever they did to let them in, so let's say they make something up, played with a Ouija board and somehow these things went into them.

And they were looking for supernatural communication with whatever. So they, you know, they were, it wasn't an accident. Then they have to say, you know, they're sorry for that sin of idolatry, of seeking false gods. And they renounce that sin. And if they're Catholic, they can be absolved. And then they say, in Jesus' name now, I don't want nothing to do with these demons anymore.

Well, now they have nothing to hook into because her will is involved and God honors the will a lot. And they may not go immediately, but eventually they have to go and they know they do. And they generally leave from the lowest to the highest. And the little ones kind of just flutter away quickly until you're dealing with who's the kingpin here. And in the old rite of exorcism before Vatican II, the priest asked two questions of the demon. What is your name? Under penalty of Jesus Christ, tell me your name.

And what is the date you've been assigned to leave this person? And they usually have to answer that unless there's something else going on we're not aware of. Like the person who's the victim has opened other doors that they're not telling us that they're also hooked into. You know what I mean? Like what kind of doors? So...

Maybe they're also doing witchcraft and we don't know that, but they're actively practicing it and they're actively putting spells on people and they're actively, but they're not telling us that. Well, those demons know we don't have to go because this person's still doing our thing. It's our thing. They're in our tent. So until you've, perfect example. Have you heard of satanic ritual abuse, SRAs? No. So just like parents can take the authority to baptize a child-

by the parent's authority, the baby gets baptized, so too the devil mimics everything God does and so too can evil happen where a person or a grandfather can take a baby and offer it to the devil and then satanic ritual abuse of the child, usually they have some kind of sexual act on the child, and offer that child to the devil for power, that they would gain some power in some way or wealth or whatever.

And oftentimes the parent doesn't even know, although they figure it out pretty quickly because the child immediately starts having problems and night terrors and suicide thoughts and all these horrible things come in. We had a case of a woman from Rome who was part of a religious order, a well-known religious order. And they said, we don't know what happened to her, but suddenly she is possessed and we need to send her for help. So she winds up with our group in Omaha. We had her for over a year.

where she's getting daily prayer, daily deliverance, daily intercessory prayer, praying over her. It took a year. And it was only when we found out, because part of the process is there's teams that lift her up every day and ask the Lord, what should we be praying for here? What has to go? And it kept coming back to a father figure in her life. So we finally called her family and said, look, there's something we don't know here. Did something happen to her as a baby?

And then the mother said there was a family member who did something evil to her, some kind of satanic blood ceremony and did consecrate her to the devil. And I'm like, I wasn't the lead on the case. It was my superior. It's kind of like, why do you think hiding that from us is going to help your daughter? Like, why wouldn't you just come clean? It wasn't you. But they're so embarrassed and ashamed that they hid it.

So once we understood what we were dealing with, we had to take her back through her time as an infant and walk her through the process of when the evil is happening that God was still watching over her and looking for her day of deliverance that was coming now. And when she took that healing, when she embraced the healing and the love, then the thing left. But it took over a year. But again, it was not her fault.

She did nothing wrong herself. People hear that and they get a little angry, like, "Well, I don't think that's fair." It's not fair. Evil is not fair. When they proclaim their name, when the demon proclaims its name, does that ever mean anything to you? Oddly, the New Rite doesn't have it in it. They don't want us talking, questioning the devil at all.

But we can still use the old right. So on occasion, I just did a big deliverance, exorcism up in Chicago of two years it's been going on in this case. Two years? Two years. Yeah, she was a prostitute whose boyfriend, probably her pimp, was a Satanist, and he kept getting her pregnant and then offering the babies to the devil through abortion, seven of them. You know, seven is kind of a funny number.

Seven times. So, yeah. I mean, you just can't imagine the scenarios people get into. Oftentimes not their own fault. She was down on her luck. She got into this business she shouldn't have. She meets this guy thinking he's going to help her and he's the worst thing that ever happened to her. So, I mean, back to the names of the demons. I mean, other than Lucifer, I mean, are there any... Are there other demons that maybe...

we should be aware of or or the general population i would say no like again don't be too curious because you're just poking your head and stuff that you don't need to know that for your own state of life but some of these a lot of them are old testament demons like the jews used to worship malik malik shows up a lot when there's abortion because the jews were offering their babies to this thing they would heat this statue it's a man's body with like a goat head with horns

bull head with horns. It has its arms out like this, and they'd heat it till it was red hot burning, like red, and then they'd place the baby on the molten burning arms, and the baby would sizzle to death. So when God says to them, stop worshiping these false idols, he's talking about this sort of stuff. It's not just throwing a little incense before a false god. They're burning their babies to death, and they don't have to be.

So God would get really angry with him. That demon, he's still alive and well. I think because abortion is still alive and well. - Let's take a quick break, Father, and then we'll pick right back up when we get back.

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Let's get back to the show. All right, Father, we're back from the break. And, you know, before we started the podcast, I was talking to you about the firearm that I gave you. And you had mentioned that that was your first firearm and that it sounded like you were basically saying you're not overly concerned with your own safety and that you were looking forward to the afterlife.

Correct. In short. And so I just wanted to give you the room to kind of expound upon that. Okay, well, this is going to be something different for a lot of people to hear because we live in a culture where at all costs, avoid pain and suffering, and at all costs, extend your life as far as you can extend it out. Okay, and I get that. I understand where that comes from, but I kind of, my own personal belief is that

and I would say the church would stand with this too, is that God knows the last day I'll be here and how I'm going. That's an interesting story too. I once asked him, how am I going to die? And he answered me. But because I don't have a family or kids, I don't know if I want to actually have a gun because I'd be afraid of using it and then killing somebody and then regretting that.

But I do understand that this is a hostile culture, particularly against the church, and it's going to get worse if more laws are put into play to discriminate against gender and all these other things that the church has never wavered on. So maybe I should. Maybe I should have a gun, at least for a warning signal, like, there's a gun here, go away. Well, I didn't mean...

I didn't want to have a discussion on the gun. What I wanted to have a discussion on was... The philosophy on this life. Okay, so that also, very unusual. Because we have all these medicines and operations that can extend our life and put us longer and longer and longer down the road. But I know that heaven is far greater than this life. I know that my citizenship is there, not here. This is a pilgrimage.

And I'm not really looking to extend the pilgrimage, so to speak. I mean, I'm going to take care of myself as best I can, which is not very good right now. As you can tell from my voice, split open head, high blood pressure, not everything's firing well. But I'm getting better. I'm at least getting things under control and back on track.

I broke my foot about two months ago and that put me out of the gym for like two months, which that's enough to just kill you, is to be away. Because going back is so painful the first few weeks. But I have to do that. And other things. I bought a cold plunge to try to shock my body every day into pain. Because pain is good. We don't experience enough of it. We're so conditioned on just be comfortable. Comfortable makes really fat, lazy priests.

You don't want your priest to be fat and lazy. You want him to be strong and alert and agile to be able to do what he needs to do. So that said, yesterday was the feast of St. Therese of Lisieux. She died at 24. She's probably one of the most famous saints in the church. You go in any churches, Jesus and Mary statue, and then Therese in most churches. Maybe Anthony is another one. She never left the convent. She was cloistered for the 10 years she was a nun.

She never went on missions. She never did anything heroic. She never started a religious order. She didn't do anything heroic or big. What did she do? She practiced what she called the little way. She did small things with tremendous love and all offering them for Jesus. And she wrote down her daily experiences in her journal. And after she died, that journal got published into a book called The Story of a Soul. And now she's one of the most famous saints in the world. She's also a doctor of the church. There's only four who are women now.

She's one of them, and she's the patron saint of missionaries because she always wanted to be missioned out to China. Of course, she never went. But in the providence of the church, she is named as the patron saint of missionaries, even though she never left the four walls of her cloister. So God accomplished what he had to do with her in 24 years. And before she died, she said the Lord made it clear to her that her real work would begin in heaven, where she would have a profound role in the church from heaven.

And if you've ever prayed a novena to St. Therese, on the ninth day of that novena, miraculously, almost always, a rose shows up because she's called the little flower. And people get a rose in some way, shape, or form, or they smell roses in their home, and there's no rose in the home. Like, she's letting people know, I'm still working hard for your salvation. Even though Jesus did the heavy lifting, we still have to choose every day. Are we going to choose God today, or are we going to choose to go away from God today?

And I'm always telling people, in every decision we make in life, you have to have on the horizon, heaven is the goal. Because you could amass vast amounts of money and power and success in this life if you really put your nose to the ground and do the hard work. And you could come out, you know, $350 million at the end of life. But if you don't get to heaven, you're a loser. Like a big loser. The biggest. There's no other. That's the only thing you have to get right.

You can get everything else wrong, but if you get to heaven, you're a winner. And I think a lot of the problems come in when people become too rich and famous. You know, this is Jesus said in the scriptures about it's harder for a rich man to enter heaven than going through the camel through the eye of a needle. What does he mean by that? The problem I've experienced in my firsthand interaction with wealthy people is not all, but many, most, I would say,

You get to a point where you feel like, "I'm so in control, I don't need anybody else, including God. Like, I'm covering all my bases, I'm good." And you kind of get deluded into thinking that you're the master of your own destiny, including heaven. That's a very dangerous place to be because that's pride. And that's probably the one thing that will block you from getting into heaven, is if you think you're going to go toe-to-toe with Jesus on getting in. You die at the end of life, you leave it all behind.

Nothing goes with you. So my big messages to people, and it's funny because John Rich, the country music guy, he just did a very long episode with Tucker where he talked about the book of Revelation. And he wrote a song about it to wake people up because we're literally blind in these times to what's important. He says, you don't know when the end of your life is going to come, but you better be ready. And by ready, I mean prepared for heaven. So when I see people in hospice and they're dying and they know they're dying,

I can tell within 10 seconds if this person has prepared their life to meet Jesus or if they squandered it away. Because they're either at radical peace and not fearing it, or they're terrified and they don't know what to do. If I could impose one point of this whole interview today to the people listening is: to embrace death because you're going to die, maybe the first to let you know you're going to die. I don't know if anybody's ever said that to you. You're going to die.

Some people go through life not knowing, or they deceive themselves and think, I'm never going to think about it because if I can just put it off long enough, maybe I'll somehow skirt it in some way. I don't know what they're thinking. But the art of dying well is directly correlated to the art of living well. And when I say living well, I mean putting God in the center of your life, acknowledging he is God and I'm not, trying to live a life worthy of the message Jesus left us with the Gospels.

Loving God first, our neighbor second, putting our place third. And when people do that, that creates a lifestyle that's not focused on me. It's focused on God and others. And that's what creates holiness. And that's what creates virtue. And at the end of life, that creates a person that's ready to die and open to heaven and wanting heaven. And I even tell people, tell God you want to be a saint. Say it out loud. I want to be a saint. I think there's a power to the audible experience.

with regard to, particularly with scriptures, I'm talking about directly to God, not into the universe and the secret and all that nonsense. And then, you know, look at some people, we have the saints as models of people who've been victorious. That's why we don't adore the saints, we venerate them. We say, "Good job, well done, you did it, and now help us get there too." And when you think about people preparing for death,

So there was a saint named Dominic Savio in Italy. He was about 12 years old, and he was being mentored by a priest named Don Bosco, who also became a saint. And Don was mentoring these young men on a life of virtue because a lot of them had bad lives, and they weren't practicing the good Christian way, you could say. So one day he stopped, and they were playing soccer, football in Italy. And...

He said, if Jesus appeared to you and said you had one hour to live, what would you do with your life in that last hour? Some of the boys are like, oh, I'd probably have to run to confession or I want to go to have mass quickly or I pray my rosary. I have to go tell my parents I'm sorry for all the times I aggravated them. And he looks at Dominic and says, what would you do? He goes, I'd play football. He goes, you'd play football?

He's like, "Yeah, I've already been to Mass. I've already prayed my rosary. I've forgiven everybody I need to forgive. I have no one to ask forgiveness of. I'm good. I'm playing football." Yeah, right? That kid knows. He knows the secret. Similarly, John Fisher is a bishop that was being held in the Tower of London for going against Henry VIII on him wanting to marry another wife, take another wife.

And he gets woken up in the morning by a guard. He says, they're going to execute you today around noon. And John Fish says, okay, I'm really tired. Can I go back to sleep? Okay, so two saints that when faced with death decided one would go to sleep and the other would play football. Why? Because they're prepared and they're ready. They're done. I'm locked and loaded. Let's go. That's how we want to finish. What would you do? Me being a...

kind of alpha and wanting to cover every base, I'd probably find the other priest that I live with and say, I need to go to confession and have the apostolic pardon. But I feel like I'm there most days anyway. You know, I go to confession at least once a month. And it's not easy to do before I had this other priest come to live with me two weeks ago. I'd have to go searching a priest. But there's a lot of graces that come through the sacrament. Plus, there's something we have called plenary indulgences in the Catholic Church, where

If I do certain things and I unite them to Jesus, such as going to Mass, receiving communion in a state of grace, going to confession every 10 days, and then if I pray a rosary in the church, I can ask for one soul to be busted out of purgatory every day. Or I can ask for myself to have my purgatory removed.

Now, my theory on this is if I'm busting all these other guys out, God's going to be more lenient to me at the end of my life. So every day I offer those prayers up for one soul to be moved into heaven. And I'm pretty sure that somebody who at the help of my prayers got into heaven is going to start praying for me the rest of my life. And so I'm hoping when that day comes, I'm going to look at this big army of saints that are like, hey, welcome. Good job.

We've been praying for you. We've been waiting for this day. That's going to be like an exciting day, a fun day, a good day. That's a day I'm waiting for. So I have a different view of death than most. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing that. We kind of talked about, you know, we're in the midst of some dark times, and I forget who you mentioned. It said this is the most evil generation of all time. Our Lady of Medjugorje, which was just given the highest approval by the Vatican.

that that apparition is valid. Wow. Like two weeks ago. Wow. He's, wow. What does that mean to you? Are we in the end times? I think we're in the end of this age of disobedience. I don't think it's the end of the world because I'm pretty sure in Revelation it talks about a thousand year peace and I think we would have noticed that if that happened. I'm pretty sure it didn't happen.

And these theologians say, oh, it's metaphorical. They don't look for a thousand-year peace. Well, you know what? Were you there when he created everything? No. So, like, it could be true. Maybe there will be an actual thousand years of real peace, peace that only can come down from heaven. But in the process, we're living in a very, like you said, it's dark. A lot of the rulers of this world have an allegiance to Satan. And, you know, there's a propensity for destruction, right? Right.

I'm not going to go into all the wars happening, but it's ironic to me, you know, whenever you look at the Old Testament and the Israelites were being persecuted unjustly, if they didn't create the problem themselves and they were just being, you know, the country comes in to try to take them over, they're always vindicated by the Lord.

Always. He crushes the enemy and sets them free and they're fine. Now, when they stray, he sometimes used armies to conquer them to teach them a lesson. But then over time, they would repent and then they would be put back into their proper place. So when I see countries trying to annihilate Israel for no good reason, I'm like, do you know who you're messing with? God's not going to just sit back.

if you're literally stirring a pot trying to exterminate the Jewish people that he founded, you better be careful. And we better be on the right side of that as Americans. Because I feel like we are telling Israel to pump your brakes and telling Iran, you're fine. We're going to give you a couple of hundred billion dollars, by the way.

What are we doing? Doesn't it say that in the end times that all the nations will turn against Israel? Yes. Do you think that's happening right now? No, because all the nations have not turned against Israel yet. I mean, I feel like we still at least verbally support Israel.

But no, I think it'll be more dramatic than that. And I don't think we're going to live in those times now, but it's only my opinion. And it's not even a really good one. Like, it's just my opinion. So don't take that to the bank. But, you know, where sin abounds, grace super abounds. So the darker the days, the more God's going to put his hand in to help us. And that's really good news. Because if you want to be a saint and you're living in times of peace—

it's a lot harder and longer to become that saint. If you're in the darkest of days, you just put your hand up and say, Lord, I want to be a saint. And there's a funnel in heaven that's going to come over you and go whoosh. And they're going to advance you in holiness very quickly because of the days we live in. And that might be the quickening that you're feeling in like this transformation that's happening in your life. Or in my own, I'm seeing things I never used to see on a regular basis again.

of when God is working these miracles and doing things that I'm just like, I just stepped back amazed. I'm like, wow, I didn't see that coming. And the more you see the exorcisms go up in number means the enemy is getting more riled up. - The more you see the what go up in number? - Exorcisms. - Okay. - They're increasing. Ever since COVID, they've been multiplying. - Really? - Oh yeah. Well, take away the sacraments, close the churches and tell people to sit home idle all day doing bad things. What are you gonna get? That was a big mistake.

And the cases take longer to get the demons out. So we used to have a lot of them would be one and done. So it's, you know, one session, they're gone. Now it's two, three, four, five times, which I have to put on a calendar, weigh out several weeks between them because I have other things I do. And then the new cases come in and they're piling up. So it's not a good situation. In Italy, they have pop-up exorcism booths. Are you serious? Dead serious.

Pop-up exorcism books. They're seeing an explosion of demonic. I mean, is there... I recently read the Book of Romans, and it's really hard, I'm not going to lie, it's really hard for me to understand what I'm reading. But... Paul's not a big fan of punctuation. But it sounded very similar to kind of what we're living into today. Sexuality, running rampant, gender confusion...

There were a lot of things in there that when I read that, I was like, holy shit, we're talking about modern day here. Are these all signs that something's coming? - Well, I mean, there's a lot of signs that the Lord said we could look to. If you go to Revelation or the book of Daniel or even chapters in Matthew, he talks about these end days, but I'm not sure it's all the end of time.

But I feel like we're in, so let me, this is again my own personal opinion. We had 2,000 years of, before Jesus came, of God tapping the Israelites and making them his people. And that was really, when we read through those scriptures, it's really God the Father who's speaking to them. And then Jesus comes and we've had 2,000 years of focus on Jesus, rightly so. But we haven't had a period that's focused on the Holy Spirit, who is an equal member of the Trinity.

And I feel like this age of the Holy Spirit is coming when God's going to crush the evil forces that are really derailing mankind in whatever way he wants. He's God, he can do whatever he wants. And then bring forth his spirit on the planet in a way that would have everybody drawn into this great giant shalom of heaven, this great time of peace and flourishing in God's word.

Imagine that. I mean, that'd be like heaven on earth. And that's, I think, that thousand years they talk about in the book of Revelation. And that would be amazing because we'd never seen that. I mean, there's pockets of that around the planet. Like this place in Medjugorje. It's so grace-filled there that you can't help but feel joy and peace. And it's out-of-body experience. I'd go, why does this happen over here? Well, first of all, everybody there is practicing Catholic and practice their faith deeply.

Everybody going there is seeking to go deeper in their Catholic faith. And even the people that work in the shops, they're all participating. So they all go to Mass every day. They all pray in the rosary every day. And there's really no discontent there against the practice of that religion. So it's just an open pipeline of grace flooding this village. And you feel it when you walk in.

You can't say that about Rome, you can't say that about Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe, no, because they're all in cities now that are partially Catholic, partially pagan, and even the Catholics aren't all practicing their faith. And so it limits the grace that goes into those places. You should go there. You had something happen there, correct? Oh, yes. When I was away from the faith all those years, I went over there because a friend invited me

And when I got there, I realized it's one of these holy places I really don't want to stay. But I stayed enough to go to bed that night because I was tired. And when I woke up in the morning, I had this overwhelming peace that I've never experienced prior and only experienced really when I'm back there. And that's when I went looking for the priest to go to confession because I knew. I said, "I'm going to stay the whole week because it's amazing to be here. Like, I don't think you feel like this anywhere in the world."

And it's natural, well, it's supernatural, but it's not a drug. It's real. It's like coming from heaven. So the funny thing is I knew the confession was going to be pretty deep and dark. So I went looking for a priest before the Mass that was going to be kind of lenient and not judgy. And so I find this priest outside the church.

And I call him Hollywood priest because he was like good looking guy, strong, handsome, tan. And he's telling jokes to like these 10 women and they're all laughing at his jokes and he's smoking his cigarette. And like, that's the guy. He will not be harsh on me. And so I went to confession to him and you heard the whole story. He absolved me. And then he said, I think you're going to be a priest. And I said, I don't know about that. But anyway, well, lo and behold, fast forward 19 years later, I go back to Medjugorje with a group.

And we did an excursion outside of the village that day, about 20 kilometers away to another parish that has a famous statue of Our Lady that we wanted to see. So we went down there. And when we pull up in the bus, the tour guide says, wait a minute here, the pastor wants to come out and greet you all. So we get out and we wait and out comes this priest. And it's him. It's the priest I went to confession to. And I remember him because this was a life-changing moment for me. I'll never forget him and his face. But when he sees me, he looks up and he goes,

oh, you became a priest. And I go, what? I go, you remember me? And he goes, yes, I've been praying for you every day. Are you serious? 19 years later. Wow. And we went and had coffee, and he stopped smoking, had a heart attack. And, you know, we both aged quite a bit in 20 years, but, like, only God can wrap those things up like that and let you know, like, not just for me, but for him, that he would know that his prayers paid off. Very, very, wow. That's...

It's like profound, right? Very profound. Very profound. I have a lot of questions I want to ask, and they are very random. Go ahead. So I'd like to talk about Easter and Christmas. Sure. And if those are the actual days, and...

I don't know where I'm going with this. I tried to talk to Megan about this. I was hoping that she had maybe a little more insight. But from my understanding, the resurrection didn't actually happen on the day we celebrate Easter. Well, that day changes every year. And that the Easter bunnies represent some type of sexuality. Is there any truth to this? Okay, so Christmas is on a set date, the 25th of December. Is that the actual date? Not sure.

Easter rotates based on the fullness, the full moon of the month. So that changes every year. So clearly it can't always be that day because the day is always different. But that's kind of not the important part. But what you say about the bunnies and all that, many times the Catholic holidays would come into existence and...

would be not just celebrating what they mean, which is the birth of Christ, but would also replace a pagan practice that was common for the pagans of that generation. So in the case of Easter, that was a time of springtime, and they had many celebrations to the gods of fertility to make sure that the animals were fertile and had lots of babies to make their farms grow and things like that.

So yes, there was probably some, in some way that was meant to abolish the old thinking of the pagan ways and bring forth the new teaching. But the first and foremost is it was established for the purpose it was. This is the resurrection of Jesus. It is new life, but this is the real new life, not the new life of your chickens and your goats. Okay, makes sense, makes sense. What about, there's a lot of talk about UFOs.

in the news today. Yes. And there seems to be two camps, maybe three camps. There's the camp where people think it's military, industrial complex type companies that have some type of technology that nobody else has access to. There's the camp that thinks that they're actually extraterrestrials. And then there is a camp that's probably growing faster than any of the other ones, which is

people believe these are some type of spiritual, maybe demonic type of entity. And I've talked to a lot of people about this stuff. Ezekiel gets brought up a lot of times. What do you think is going on with this UFO type stuff? Is it demonic? I do think that there are countries with advanced military equipment

that probably could replicate things in the sky that we don't understand. That's for sure. I mean, we know Russia has missiles that we are not caught up on. Hypersonic stuff that can get, I think it's 20,000 miles an hour or something. That's going to look different in the sky than a plane. But with regard to extraterrestrial beings, so creatures that have an intelligence and a will, right?

There's not a big argument for that in the Bible. When God created everything, everything means everything. So to have a creature that has an intellect and a will would put them on the level of man because we're the only ones who have an intellect and a will that are created. What do I mean by that? So we have an intelligence that can make deductions and come to conclusions that no other species can do. Dogs can learn something by habit, but they're not deducing something

Well, if I move the dog bowl three feet to the left in the morning, maybe they'll put more food in it. They're not thinking like that. They're just going by habit. But if there's a created being out there that is not talked about in the scriptures, that would be bizarre that God would leave that out for who knows what reason. And in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it makes a clear and definitive statement that only man is a creature that was endowed with this ability to know God and choose him.

Of the created order. The angels would be in the same boat, but they don't have material bodies. So once you say that, it rules out all other life forms that would have an intelligence. Sure, there can be bacteria on the moon or something that can grow, but it's not thinking about growing, nor is it trying to take over the moon. So there's a difference there. That's my opinion. But they can inhabit...

life forms and look like creatures. Do you think some of these orbs are some type of spiritual entity? Could be. I mean, think about this. What would be the greatest hoax in the history of the world? And we've been building it up for 60, 70 years with the Star Wars. False flag alien invasion. Star Trek, all this stuff. And then finally one day...

The president gets on TV and says, "We're about to come clean. There is another life form that we have to introduce you to. Here it is." And they can speak English and communicate, and they look weird, and they have higher intelligence. Of course they will. They're demonic. And they say, "We've come from another galaxy to let you know that you are getting off course, and you need to make some adjustments if you want your world to survive. And here's your big problem."

We're going to give you some technology to show you that you can have clean energy with all the bells and whistles. Oh great, let's have that. And then they drop this in. And by the way, there's many other ways to God, not just in the religions that you know. And that's the big sinker where it gets everybody off. They're all untethered from God now. You don't have to do this. Just be kind to one another. You don't have to worship God.

That's created more wars in your world than all the good works you could possibly do. Stop doing that. Well, the higher life form just told us we shouldn't do it. And they're clearly ahead of us, so we better listen to them. Like people would go for it hook, line, and sinker because they're not tethered to the one true God. They're not getting their face in the Bible every day, studying the scriptures and learning what he really said and what is the only way to eternal life. Jesus said, I am the way, not a way. So once you call God a liar,

then I can't relate to you anymore. We're not going to have a discussion. Do you think any of these entities could be for good? If they're demonic, no. They only have one goal, and that's they want to... They can't hurt God anymore. They could hurt Jesus in the person when he walked the planet, but he's untouchable now. So the only way they get back at us, back at God, is by hurting his children. That's their only mission. You know, in the 12th book of Revelation, it says...

The devil went off to make war against the woman and her offspring, those who follow the laws of God and bear testimony to Jesus Christ. That's a very small population of the planet. Even among Christians, you know, as we've discussed, not everybody's following God's will and not everybody's giving a testimony to Jesus. I guess what I'm also referring to is it's, I'm sorry, I did not understand the Ezekiel story.

And so I'm kind of asking you, it sounded like that... I'll just let you go into it. You would know more about that than me. But what is the passage? I don't know what you're talking about. Well, apparently there is a... I don't know it. But there is a part in Ezekiel where it sounds like some type of a UFO encounter. But...

It makes it sound like it's actually an angel. I don't know. I don't know what that is. It's not the dry bones, is it? He says prophesy over these bones and they start growing sinew and muscle and then the flesh comes. No, that's not it. That's not it. I wish I had it. Well, okay, those creatures have six wings and they move only backward and forward and they don't spin or turn their head. And they have human faces but then other...

The eagle is one side of their head. The lion is one side of it. So they definitely don't look like orbs. Okay. And it says that when they move, the sound of them is like rushing water. It's so loud. So it's a very definitive description that you can't just carve out, well, we don't really hear any noise, but it still could be them. Or maybe it's just a light bulb. No, these things had all sorts of things going on that were very unique. If you see them...

Then you can start thinking maybe Jesus is coming back. Okay. But that'll look a lot different than an orb. Okay. Well, speaking of Jesus, where was he in the adolescent years where he's not in the Bible? There's like a period of time where he disappeared. He's in Nazareth. That's where he was raised. Okay. And yeah, we only know when he was 12, they lost him there.

when they went up to the temple to worship and they took him in a caravan. And it wasn't until like two days later they realized Mary thought he was with the men and Joseph thought he was with the women and he was neither. But that's the only childhood scripture we have for him. Interesting. Why do you think that is? Well, the scriptures are given to us for the purpose of giving us a clear enlightenment on the way to heaven. And I would say probably a lot of his childhood years

although probably interesting, don't have to do with the actual saving event of his passion, death, and resurrection. I think they would be very interesting to know, but not definitive for our salvation, whereas his adult years are very definitive. Okay. And this is a funny thing. You know, like, you're a guy. I'm a guy.

When we buy something that's a little bit complex, like even some of the new cars today, it's like you sit in them and I'm like, oh my, I don't know what to hit first. Where's the on button? There's an owner's manual. You go to the owner's manual when you don't know what you're doing, right? You should anyway. I know we buy, you know, dressers and things from the Scandinavian, what is it called?

- Ikea. - Ikea. And we sit down and go, "I can do this without the instructions." And then two hours later, I'm like, "I have six extra parts here. What am I doing wrong?" So you need to go to the owner's manual, right? And the Bible is the owner's manual for mankind to know how we're supposed to live and behave and work. Like if you're passing a guy on the highway who's got a broken down car and he's got the engine open and he's looking at the engine and he has

He's got the oil cap open. He's got a jar of oil in this hand and he's got a jar of honey in this hand. And he doesn't know which one. And you're like, "Hey buddy, let me help you. I know a little bit about cars." "No, no, I know what I'm doing. Leave me alone." I go, "You should at least check the owner's manual. It's going to say put the oil in the oil container." And he's like, "No, I'm good." And he dumps the honey in. And he goes to start the car and it's like dead. Yeah, you didn't listen.

And you did it your way and you didn't check the owner's manual. And now, by the way, you're a pedestrian for life. Good luck. But we do that with religion. Like, we know better. We're just going to do it our way. And I wish people would go back to the scriptures. And then even better, if you can get somebody to kind of break them open for you. There's a lot of great theologians out there who can do that. Go through, you know, Mike Schmitz is doing the one year through the Bible. He gives a little direction. It's enough. Like, it would give us a better understanding of life.

not just who God is, but when we understand who Jesus is, we know who we are. And if you don't know who you are, the world is going to redefine you the way they want to see you. And you're going to buy it. And they're going to get lost. You got to know who you are first. Do you feel like, do you think there's a possibility that any of the scriptures have been held from the Bible or have been pulled through thousands of years that we're unaware of? No. Well, it depends what Bible you have. Do you have a Catholic Bible? No.

I have a lot of Bibles. I have a Catholic Bible. The Catholic Bible has seven books in it that the Protestant Bible doesn't have. Do you know Maccabees? No. Oh, Maccabees, man, will be your book. All right. Oh, man, these are warriors. I'll check it out. Warriors. And they will fight to the death for their faith and their country. There are a lot of people that think that the Bible will become solely digital.

- Terrible problem. - And that things will begin to be pulled out of that. - Manipulated. - And so I know people that are stocking warehouses full of Bibles in preparation. - I say it on my radio show at least once a month, go get yourself a paper Bible printed by a reputable company and also a catechism of the church.

Because you don't know what you're looking at when you pull up something on the computer. Is that really what it says? Or is it something that sounds a little bit different than that? Or is it gone completely? Those days are coming. Are you kidding with AI? Is evil Satan? Are they working through technology and AI? 100%. How so? Since the dawn of technology, they've been working through technology. I mean, they manipulate everything. When I'm trying to print out a homily...

the computer will suddenly jam up. Happens all the time. Anything that's going to expand God's kingdom, the computer just stops printing. And I have to say, in the name of Jesus Christ, I bind all spirits of blockage and games off this computer and this printer and send you to the foot of the cross never to return here again. And then, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, blzzz, bl

There's a Monsignor I know in DC who's an excellent exorcist. He does it full time. They text him. The demons text him. What do they text him? They send blasphemies. They say horrible things about Jesus and Mary. They talk about some of his cases. Like, this victim is never going to... They're ours forever. You can't have them. And they'll try to call that number on the phone, and it's a non-working number.

Yeah, they do this. So imagine if they're doing that, imagine the field day they could have with AI. You already don't know what's generating it. Yeah. Yeah. It scares the hell out of me, to be honest, with what that could develop into. Yeah. I mean, if these computers are actually learning, if they're learning and they're going to bypass humans, that doesn't pose well if they're being manipulated by a side that hates humanity. That's not good.

You know, go back to that old movie, War Games. Like, that's got to be like 40 years old by now. But back in the day, you know, this kid could be playing a little computer game and suddenly he's tapped into, like, the nuclear codes and through a mistake is going to start a world war by accident. Well, that's, you know, it's a nice story with a, you know, a precocious kid. But now imagine that these computer intelligence can go into anything, including the military.

Or another country that we don't trust. They send one missile, we're going to assume it's for our harm and we're going to have to defend ourselves. Yeah, it is dangerous. What about social media? I don't like it for very specific reasons. So Instagram is basically peddling envy. Twitter is peddling anger. And Facebook is basically just selling you. And for all those reasons, I don't like it.

and particularly for the children. I worry so much for the teenagers and the up-and-coming teenagers because if that's where you're going to get most of your information, it's mostly going to be false. And it's going to create, like again, if you don't know who you are and most teenagers don't know who they are yet, the world's going to redefine you and it's going to tell you you're something you're not and that you're not worthy, you're not good enough, you're not pretty enough, you're not smart enough, you're not wealthy enough. When I was a kid, we watched shows like The Brady Bunch and I Love Lucy.

And although they weren't, you know, exactly our lives, they were pretty close. Like, they lived in modest... The Brady Bunch house was supposed to be amazing in the day. It's really not that amazing. I love Lucy. They had two bedrooms. And they slept in separate beds because that's the day.

But it wasn't like there was envy over their lifestyles. Like, we could relate to them. Like, we get it. Today, when the kids are watching TV, it's all these mega millionaires in their big mansions with their private boats and their yachts and their airplanes. And they turn off the program and they think...

My life is terrible. I don't have anything. And it's really not true, you know, because almost 2 billion people on the planet don't live in a home. They sleep outside and they have to scavenger for food and they don't have running water. Like, compare yourself to them and we are living like kings. But there's been a whole culture of ingratitude by envy that's created through social media and Hollywood. That's very true, you know.

Dom Razo, the same guy that gave me that rosary, told me that he thought that the iPhone was the forbidden fruit. And then if you look at the... The logo is very interesting. It is. That's what he said. Accidental? I don't think so. Is there a lot of... Do you see a lot of symbolism in the world today? Like what we're talking about?

Well, there was a period of time up until maybe 10 or 15 years ago that the devil really tried to remain hidden. And his biggest deception was to convince people he didn't exist. And that went on for a long time where people were just like, oh, that's just not real. That's fake. You know, even the head of the Jesuit order right now, the current head, you know, it was just a couple of years ago, he came out and said, the devil's not a real person. It's just an idea. It's not real.

I'm sorry, Jesus didn't go into the desert and do battle with an idea. I think he was face to face with a man or a person. So even in the highest levels of religious life in the world, who also from their community, we have a Pope. And apparently that guy didn't believe that that was a real person. So it's an odd time. Where are we going with this? Symbolism. Oh, the symbolism. Okay, so but in the last 15 years,

It is all out, "I'm alive and well and with you, and I'm proud to be Satan. Worship me." Right? We see it at the half-full, Super Bowl halftime performances, all these award shows. I mean, it's everywhere, and it's so blatant in the concerts, the concerts. What are some of the specific symbols you're saying? Pentagrams, upside-down crucifixes.

The Ouija board is everywhere. I was just in a city, the suburb of Pittsburgh. They go, "You know, just down the road is the largest Ouija board in the world. It's the whole roof of a hotel." And I'm like, "I don't need to see that." But it's growing in popularity. People are getting it. And we're coming up on the worst season of the year. So Halloween is the devil's holy day. That's his day. People get angry with me. They say, "Father, it's just kids putting on costumes, trick or treating."

No, not really, because you're really participating in his day. And why would you want to participate in anything that's giving glory to the devil? I had a couple of families in the last parish leave the school, withdrew from the school because we didn't have Halloween in the school. And I'm like, this is your hell you're going to die on? It's Halloween? Like, you're not going to do well in what's coming in the future if this is your big thing. They left. Yeah.

In New York City, where I'm from, there was an exorcist there when I was on Wall Street. After my conversion, I met with him. His name was Father James Labar, God rest his soul, pioneer exorcist of our day. And he told me that Halloween's the most dangerous season of the year for the homeless.

And I'm like, well, why is that? Are they eating bad candy? What's going on here? He's like, no, no, no. They have these vans that come around and they tell the homeless they're going to take them to a shelter. They've got whole big meals set up for them and showers and they can wash their clothes and all this. And a lot of them get in the vans and go. And then they tie them up and they hold them for the 31st. And then they sacrifice them on the evening of Halloween to the devil. And it's like a perfect crime because nobody's looking for them. Yeah. I mean, it's a big deal. It's a real thing.

There's a video on YouTube, which I'm shocked it hasn't been pulled down because it's a guy about 20 years old who was raised in an occult family and he was groomed to become the chief witch that was going to execute a girl on Halloween and offer her to the devil. And he went through with it and he talks about it face-to-face with the interviewer who's from some Christian network. And he says, you know,

It's all part of the ceremony. This is to get more power, we have to offer them a human life. And so it's usually a young woman. What kind of power do they get? More demonic power, so they can have more influence, so they can have more wealth, they can have more success. But it's only fleeting. It's not forever. And then, of course, at the end of life, there's a big problem getting out of it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, would you say your friend was a pioneer in,

- Exorcist, what does that mean? How is he a pioneer? - Because for a while the church just stopped it. There was really no exorcism happening. I remember when I first came back to the church, my friend, Father Benedict Rochelle, he told me, I had said to him one day, I said, "There was something crazy happening in the church." I can't remember what it was, but it wasn't off the charts, but it was something stupid.

And I go, why does this stuff keep happening? You know, why is it so messed up? The church seems to be a complete mess a lot of the time. And he says, I'll tell you why. He says, because in America, we have 2,500 canon lawyers and 11 exorcists. That number should be reversed. No disrespect to the canon lawyers who are watching. We need you. We love you. But he makes a point. You know, if evil is having its day, we need to be more offensive in fighting it.

I think my last question is, you know, at the beginning of this, you had mentioned that demons, you had mentioned some type of a reference where you said demons are very much like lawyers or attorneys. And I've heard similar things before. Could you expound on that a little bit and explain why that is? Because when God set up the world and creation in the universe, including the spiritual aspects,

There's a divine providence that governs everything. And in as much as we can understand it, and they understand it more because they're smarter than we are. Basically, when we live our lives loving and obeying God and his laws, basically we're protected from the supernatural power of the enemy. The natural power is temptation. We're all subject to that through the original sin and through concupiscence that we're all saddled with.

But from the supernatural works of the enemy, usually we're protected. Now in very rare cases, like Padre Pio and Saint John Vianney and Saint Anthony in the Desert,

When they can't get their soul, they can just physically attack them. And so many of these saints were beaten during the night. And you would say, well, why does God allow that? Well, he allows it to bring forth a greater good. What would the greater good be? That those saints knew that what was happening and they would be offering that to Jesus and uniting to his cross to convert their sufferings into grace to save more souls.

And so in every attack the enemy throws at us, we have the power to overcome him by uniting to Jesus' cross and converting our trials into grace to rescue more souls back from the enemy. The problem is most people don't do this. And the enemy winds up winning that battle because they don't fight back. In some cases, they use the enemy's tactics to get revenge. But that's a side story. So again, we were talking about

- Legalities. - The legal aspects, okay. I'm getting a little bit brain fog. It's been a few hours. So they know they don't have domain over us because we have free will. We have to choose to go against God to open up a door that they can come in. And that's what they do. And they're very patient. They're patient, legalistic spirits. And they just wait and they wait. So they throw out a little mild temptation to open a little bit of crack

and then once they get in there they throw another temptation to open it wider and all of a sudden they have you know some guy on a rabbit hole in pornography for three hours going down this rabbit hole and then eventually going out and and acquiring a hooker for you know gratuitous sex and now they own him until he gets free they own him and they know their legal limits the minute he repents and asks for god's absolution and mercy

They kind of have to go, and they know that too. So they kind of keep you away from getting back to God, and they'll put roadblocks in your path, and they'll make excuses, and they'll feed you all these lies to get you convinced it's not worth it, just stay where you are. But they work the system, and they know how to do it. I mean, these things have been around since creation, watching humans. And I know we all like to think we're special and unique, but we're really not.

And they've been watching us for thousands and thousands of years, and they know how the human person works. And you got to, unless you're under God's protection and he's watching out for you, you're never going to beat him because they're a lot stronger than us. But on the flip side, you plus Jesus always equals victory. If you want to put it in simple terms, that's it. You plus Jesus will always equal victory, and you never have to be afraid. Thank you for saying that.

You know, I want to, it's been a long interview. I do want to wrap this up. I have a lot more questions, but I'll keep them at bay for now. Yeah, and we can have a cup of coffee if you want to talk about other stuff another time. I would love that. I would love that. I would love if you came down to church one Sunday. I will do that. 10.30, but make sure I'm in town. I'm leaving for two weeks. I'm dreading this trip because I feel like I'm going to get trapped in Europe at the worst possible time.

I still have these weird, like, should I really be going on this trip? Am I going to get back? Are you trapped in a war? Well, we'll be praying for you. Thank you. And I will come down and join you for Mass. That'd be great. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, and I invite you to confession too. Thank you. You got to just, I have to throw it out there. I'd be remiss in my job. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, Father. God bless you. This is great.

Thank you, Sean. Thank you. Check out the podcast that inspired Taylor Sheridan's latest series.

Land man. There's a stretch of road in a real rich region of West Texas. This region of West Texas, known as the Permian Basin, is in the midst of the biggest oil boom in history. This is a story of roughnecks, billionaire wildcatters, and wannabe dreamers. My name is Christian Wallace. From Texas Monthly and Imperative Entertainment, this is Boomtown. Boomtown. Wherever you listen.