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Good evening,

Due to the topic that I will explain below, I would ask you the kindness of a private reply or the deletion of my name from it, thank you. Some time ago, following the death of my dear father to whom I was very close, I was persuaded by a friend to attend a meeting of people who, like me, had lost a dear figure.

Not really understanding what I was really getting into, I attended this sort of round table in which, one by one, everyone asked questions to what they thought were our loved ones, called by the person leading the group. On the table there was something like a piece of cork that seemed to move independently on the table itself.

Strongly impressed by all that I saw happening before my eyes, I also tried to ask if I could talk to my dad, but I was told by the person leading the group that he was not there that evening, and that he would come to see me later anyway. While I was being told this, this sort of cork that seemed to be spinning as I said before independently on the table stood firmly in front of me.

Immediately after this happened I was taken by a sudden and intense sleep, so much so that I had to move from the table to the couch nearby. I was woken up by my friend informing me that the meeting was over. I am a deeply sceptical person and I am not used to attending such things but I must say that this experience really shook me.

I have never told anyone about this, but listening to some tv programmes I realised that I may have unwittingly participated in a sort of séance and if so, I would like to know if I should say so in confession and if, above all, I may have come into contact with demonic things that even now without my knowledge accompany me.

Thank you for your attention.

Priest’s reply

My dear friend, 

1. Yes, you unknowingly participated in a séance.

In séances, unless it is deception or pure suggestion exercised by other people, in one way or another the bad spirits, that is demons, always intervene.

Agreeing to speak with demons is the same thing as relating to them and saying that one is at their disposal.

2. Without thinking about it, one worships someone that should not be worshipped. This means that one opens the door for him to intervene in our lives.

Now, the devil never brings good except to deceive. When he comes, as the Lord has warned us, he comes “only to steal and slaughter and destroy” (John 10:10).

3. That is why it is a sin. Without thinking about it, one does not listen to God’s prohibition which commands not to dialogue with demons.

Sin is the same thing as breaking the prohibition against harming oneself.

That is why we read in the Holy Scripture: “he who strays after them sins against his own life” (Sir 19:4).

4. St Thomas says that “we do not offend God except by doing something contrary to our own good” (Summa Theologica, III, 46, 4, ad 3).

And he also says that it is an offence done to God because not only “one despises his law” but “he harms someone, either himself or another — something that pertains to God (for we are God, ed.) insofar as the one to whom the harm is done is included under God’s providence and protection.” (Summa Theologica, I-II, 47, 1, 1).

5. In this last statement by St. Thomas, unlike many – especially non-believers or agnostics – who have a concept of a vengeful God, which is totally false and alien to Christian revelation, emerges all the charity of God, all the infinite love that he wants us. He who sins, says St Thomas, harms himself or harms others, and this concerns God, because one harms by sin that which is under his providence and protection.

6. Good for you that whoever at that moment was taking the place of the devil said that your father’s presence was not there. You can see that he was unable to act on you because you were armed and defended by grace and had ended up there without full awareness of the mind.

Certainly he managed to do something by inducing you to sleep.

7. So my advice to you is to go to confession as soon as possible to be freed from any possible addiction.

Conversion, as I have said many times, is the first exorcism to be performed. It is always liberating.

Obviously, you will never attend those meetings again.

And, if you get the chance, beg anyone else not to attend them just for their sake.

8. There is no better means of communion with our dead than prayer and suffrage.

I am thinking in particular of the Rosary prayed for a loved one: our mind and affection are always with that person.

As we pray, our loved ones are with us, grateful for that communion.

They are not satisfied with listening, but become ministers of many thoughts from Heaven, evoking in us the teachings of Christ and at the same time mediators of many graces.

Yes, here one always feels great peace, quite the opposite of what one feels in séances, which are always the source of so much evil, especially in the soul.

Thank you so much for this email.

I bless you and remember you in prayer,

Father Angelo