More and more people today claim to be “spiritual but not religious.” And religion is publicly mocked more and more often. So-called artists, musicians and producers routinely use blasphemy as though it were a condiment.
At a papal audience in St. Peter’s Square in September, a young woman hurled insults at the Holy Father in a “cavernous voice” and resisted security officers with superhuman strength. Later reports confirmed that she has been under the care of Rome’s chief exorcist for some years.
Angels — faithful and fallen — are not the product of some scriptwriter’s imagination. A spiritual battle is going on. Christ has won the victory, but we still have to make His victory our own. It is strangely reassuring, therefore, to learn about a man who dabbled in the occult, came close to the gates of hell, but nevertheless returned to life in Christ and has been declared Blessed by the Catholic Church.
Bartolo Longo was born in 1841 in Laziano (Southern Italy), the son of a well-to-do physician. His father died when he was only 10, and Bartolo was raised by a very pious mother. He attended an academy run by the Piarist Fathers, who gave the boy a fine education in the humanities and instilled in him a great love for the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Bartolo’s mother remarried Giovanni Campi, a lawyer, who urged the gifted youngster to take up law. He began his studies in Lecce, finding time for political and musical activities as well. He later transferred to the university in Naples.
The intellectual atmosphere there was turbulent and vociferously un-Christian. Many professors were blatantly anticlerical, and among the neighbors in Longo’s apartment building was an apostate priest. Though Bartolo was a brilliant student, “higher education” became his downfall. He avidly read the Life of Jesus by Ernest Renan, which reduces Our Lord to the level of a mere man. Longo’s faith was badly shaken, and superstition entered in.
Through dubious “friends,” Bartolo Longo became interested in spiritualism, which in Naples at that time had taken on the trappings of an organized religion. In the spring of 1864, he attended a séance. So began “a period of humiliating and devastating deviations…. I thought I had discovered the way to truth, but together with some of my friends, talented and rich young Calabrians, I threw myself instead into the mire of the darkest and most infernal society.” Longo took “instructions” in spiritism, and after a three-day fast he was initiated as a “priest” of the occult.
A biography of Bartolo Longo by M. Spreafico examines the question of whether the law student was actually possessed. “His will power was weakened to the extent that he became an automaton, moved to act by an impelling force coming from another being. His spiritual energy, if not completely exhausted, was certainly inert: the spirit came into him and operated in him.” Longo later explained that the demon, while using his body, was unable to touch his soul. If this is correct, it must be due to the amazing fact that, even while a member of the spiritist society, he never failed to recite his daily Rosary.
While experimenting with the occult, Bartolo Longo permanently damaged his health. Providentially, he kept in touch with a Catholic friend, Professor Vincenzo Pepe, who referred him to a holy and learned Dominican priest, Alberto Radente. Supported by a team of prayer warriors at Holy Rosary Church in Portamedina, Padre Radente helped the young lawyer overcome his doubts and difficulties and entrust himself to Our Lady.
