Allegations described as "explosive" were made in Rome last November by an archbishop that members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy there are secretly involved in formal satanic worship. These charges have been confirmed as true by a well-known Vatican insider and are all the more remarkable by the total lack of notice in the U.S. press.
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo made the accusations in an address to an audience of clergy and laity from across the globe at the Fatima 2000 International Congress on World Peace, held in Rome on November 18-23, 1996. Commenting on the growth of evil in the world and the need for more exorcists to aid the many people afflicted by demonic activity, he stated:
"Now the third dimension [of evil] is the most dangerous. It is subtle and most terrible. . . I could not believe when I discovered this third dimension of evil. The third dimension is people who follow instructions in satanic sects. . .
"Now with this third dimension, I'm sorry to say, our Church belongs to it. I'm very sorry, I could not understand myself, and even now I don't understand. But the only consolation I have is that, well, Judas Iscariot was one. Together with Jesus for three years, he never changed, then I understand that the third dimension of evil existed not only now, but it existed even then. Because nothing could change the heart of Judas Iscariot — nothing."
Milingo, formerly Archbishop of Lusaka, Zambia, now works in the Vatican as Special Delegate to the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Immigrants and Itinerants. He is an official exorcist, has written books such as Face to Face With the Devil, and travels around the world preaching and healing. He has accused fellow Catholic clergymen of harboring Satan's minions:
"The devil in the Catholic Church is so protected now that he is like an animal protected by the government; put on a game preserve that outlaws anyone, especially hunters, from trying to capture or kill it. The devil within the Church today is actually protected by certain Church authorities from the official devil-hunter in the Church — the exorcist. So much so that the exorcist today is forbidden to attack the devil. The devil is so protected that the one who is the hunter, the exorcist, is forbidden to do his job."
Statements like these understandably caused a furor in the Italian press, gaining front-page headlines. Three days after his speech Milingo gave a press conference to clarify his remarks, causing a second outburst of sensational media coverage. To the question, "Are there men of the Curia who are followers of Satan?" the prelate replied, "Certainly there are priests and bishops. I stop at this level of ecclesiastical hierarchy because I am an archbishop, higher than this I cannot go."
Il Tempo and other major daily papers reported that Milingo used a statement by Pope Paul VI to back up his charges. In 1972 Paul surveyed the wreckage to the Church after the Second Vatican Council and was widely reported to have said, "From somewhere or other, the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God." Milingo added, "I have not heard that anyone has seen him leave. We must pray that he will go away."
Nary a word of this made it into the American media, until it was reported in the Winter 1997 issue of The Fatima Crusader, a conservative pro-Marian Catholic newsletter associated with the group that sponsored the Fatima 2000 Congress. The story was picked up by William F. Jasper and reported in The New American, the organ of the John Birch Society, a right-wing political group, in the issue of March 3, 1997. It is that account that this article is largely based on.
In The Fatima Crusader article, Malachi Martin, a famous ex-Jesuit, Vatican insider, and best-selling author, said, "Archbishop Milingo is a good bishop and his contention that there are satanists in Rome is completely correct. Anybody who is acquainted with the state of affairs in the Vatican in the last 35 years is well aware that the prince of darkness has had and still has his surrogates in the court of St. Peter in Rome."
Martin had first made reference to a diabolic rite held in Rome in his 1990 non-fiction
best-seller about geopolitics and the Vatican, The Keys of This Blood, in which
he wrote:
"Most frighteningly for [Pope] John Paul [II], he had come up against the irremovable
presence of a malign strength in his own Vatican and in certain bishops' chanceries. It
was what knowledgeable Churchmen called the 'superforce.' Rumors, always difficult to
verify, tied its installation to the beginning of Pope Paul VI's reign in 1963. Indeed
Paul had alluded somberly to 'the smoke of Satan which has entered the Sanctuary'. . . an
oblique reference to an enthronement ceremony by Satanists in the Vatican. Besides, the
incidence of Satanic pedophilia — rites and practices — was already documented
among certain bishops and priests as widely dispersed as Turin, in Italy, and South
Carolina, in the United States. The cultic acts of Satanic pedophilia are considered by
professionals to be the culmination of the Fallen Archangel's rites." (p. 632)
Martin has revealed much more about this alleged ritual in his recent novel, Windswept House. In this story, he vividly describes a ceremony called "The Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer" supposedly held in St. Paul's Chapel in the Vatican, but linked with concurrent satanic rites here in the US, on June 29, 1963, barely a week after the election of Paul VI.
According to The New American, Martin has confirmed that the ceremony did indeed occur as he had described. "Oh yes, it is true; very much so," the magazine reported he said. "But the only way I could put that down into print is in novelistic form." He said more members of the clergy becoming aware of the situation, and that Archbishop Milingo was "merely like that actor in the movie Network, who got fed up and said, 'I'm not going to take it anymore.'"
Milingo's remarks have been strangely ignored by the American news media. The New American claimed that a Lexis/Nexis data search found not a single mention of his Fatima 2000 Congress statements, and were informed by an Associated Press researcher that Milingo was considered "a big old mouth" that was always spouting "a lot of insanity," because of his outspoken opinions about the existence of Satan and of miracles.
As for Malachi Martin's book, Windswept House, it has not gotten the critical acclaim or widespread publicity of his past efforts. It has been virtually ignored, even though it is published by Doubleday, a major mainstream house. Reviewers, he said, "are steering away from it. They don't know what to think about it; they don't know what to say." But Martin continues to speak out, doing numerous radio interviews.