June 12, 1976
THE SMOKE OF HELL
Write, son:
I mention once more the words of my Vicar upon earth: “The smoke of hell has entered into the Church.” No one, or nearly no one, has given due importance to this expression of the Pope.
Few have known how to give to these words a practical sense; smoke tarnishes and obscures, and Satan has obscured the mind of many, who are at the top of the structures, that should be used at the service of a pastoral practice of salvation.
Congregations, religious orders, seminaries, convents, colleges, schools, parishes, churches .... the smoke of hell has entered everywhere! You see smoke arrive like water, and perhaps you know not where it comes from, how it insinuates; penetrates, tarnishes and soils without making a big impression. This has been, and is, the action of Satan.
Infection spread
I already spoke to you about base, coarse and clumsy blindness; now I confirm that this expression corresponds to a sorrowful reality.
Son, I do not descend to details and particulars, for they no longer exist; it is a matter of a social evil in the Church that has been frightfully spread.
Infected seminaries? How many! Today things happen in my Church that could nor be humanly explained, without a personal intervention of the demon.
There have always been unpleasant details; they began in the apostolic college with the betrayal of Judas and the flight of the apostles; then the heresies and the scandals that have successively happened during the centuries.
Where man is, there also is his vigorous enemy, Satan, who neglects nothing in order to induce man to evil.
It is for this reason that I taught you to ask every day: deliverance from the evil one.
What did the Holy Father mean when he said: “Today things happen in the Church that can only be explained by the personal intervention of the demon?”
First, my Vicar wanted to reaffirm a truth of faith, for it is a clear result and is repeated by revelation. Then he wanted to reaffirm that Satan is a real and living person, frightfully active and ferociously wicked, in perennial movement, to spread spiritual poison, much more dangerous than the most active and potent material poison.
The things that he realizes to harm the Church, are those the Pope alludes to, when he points out his personal intervention in the Church today. His action is universal and his criminal acts, that he plots in his groups, his assemblies and sects, are innumerable.
My Vicar, in virtue of the preeminent position he occupies in the Church and in the world, and by the grace of his state, knows very well the evils that Satan realizes in the Church.
My Vicar knows these evils that Satan brings to completion, making use of traitors, of corrupt persons of every kind and breed; of renegade and apostate priests, for whom all of you should desire and ask salvation.
Fasting and prayer
Here I should remind you of my words spoken to the apostles: there are demons that you cannot cast out; to cast them out one needs much prayer and penance.
It will be seen to what tremendous excesses the action of the evil one has arrived; many of those who do not see this today, or who see it in a confused manner, will believe if they have time.
In my reborn Church this will be the great theme in which the catechesis will be anchored: to form Christians with a true consciousness of being combatants against the forces of evil: if the enemy does not desist from his attacks neither should the combatants become weary in its defense.
Son, I bless you and with you, I bless those who truly desire to become active in every way and with all means, for the defense of souls against the forces of evil.