Word: theophilus
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...Anthony's Monastery of the Capuchin Friars at Marathon, Wis. last week, a wise and white-haired monk named Rev. Theophilus Riesinger went about his daily orisons and meditations, indifferent to the fact that he was being widely publicized among U. S. Catholics as a potent and mystic exorcist of demons. Publicizers were the Religious Bulletin of the University of Notre Dame, and the Catholic Register of Denver, whose 300,000 subscribers last fortnight read the following story condensed from a pamphlet called Begone Satan...
...diabolical possession for a dozen years: she could not pray, take communion or even pronounce the name of Christ. Doctors had examined her, found her neither mentally nor physically abnormal. With the approval of the Bishop of Des Moines, the woman was made ready for exorcism by learned Father Theophilus, who upon 19 prior occasions had successfully made use of the Church's ancient rite, canonically available to all priests, for casting out devils...
Strong-armed nuns bound her, placed her upon a bed. But soon as Father Theophilus began the long series of prayers and commands to the devils to depart, "with lightning speed the possessed dislodged herself from the bed and the hands of protectors, and her body, carried through the air, landed high above the door of the room and clung to the wall with catlike grips." It was necessary to pull her down by force...
With the convent room full of noise and confusion, nuns and the local priests were obliged at times to leave it to rest. But the bespectacled old German-born Capuchin never stopped exorcising. For protection Father Theophilus, by special permission, wore a pyx containing the Blessed Sacrament. "Horrible excrements, obviously preternatural in their volume and filth, were ejected by the possessed woman, as the devils' endeavored to hit the Blessed Sacrament (although they always missed It)." When the priest approached with a relic of the True Cross concealed under his cassock, there were howls: "I cannot bear that...
...Little '37, James H. Braddock, Jr. '35, Roger G. Rand, Jr. '35, Stearns P. Cummings '37, Reginald H. Smith, Jr. '37, Hallowell V. Morgan, Jr. '37, Hathaway Watson, Jr. '37, A. Sterling MacDonald, Jr. '36, John A. Curtis, Jr. 1G.B., Walter J. Watson '36, Field C. Leonard '36, Theophilus P. Chandler, Jr. '37, David M. Curtis...