St. Bartolo Longo (1841-1926)At a time when so many people are turning to the occult and New Age for answers, the Church has canonized a former priest of Satan who not only discovered the emptiness of Satan’s promises, but his powerful conversion story now shines a light on the path back to the Truth.
Among the seven new saints who were canonized by Pope Leo XIV on October 19 was Bartolo Longo, a man who, at one point in his life, was so far from God that he was actually serving as a priest of Satan. Perhaps the Holy Father was thinking of Bartolo when he said in his sermon that “God grants justice to all, giving his life for all . . . He sees evil and redeems it by taking it upon himself.”
The Lord took upon Himself a great deal of evil when He redeemed the fallen soul of Bartolo Longo.
Born into a devout Catholic family near Brindisi, Italy, he began to lose his way at the tender age of ten when his mother died. At the time, the country was in the grips of political upheaval spurred by the actions of the revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi who led an uprising aimed at eliminating the papal city states. As a result, by the time Bartolo entered college, where his professors indoctrinated their students with hatred of the Church, Bartolo became one of them.
“I, too, grew to hate monks, priests and the Pope,” he would later write, “and in particular [I detested] the Dominicans, the most formidable, furious opponents of those great modern professors, proclaimed by the university the sons of progress, the defenders of science, the champions of every sort of freedom.”
St. Bartolo Longo's burial place in Pompeii, ItalyAs this article recounts, “Like many college students confronted with new ideas and disillusioned with their upbringing, Longo gravitated toward these occult practices, through seances and other spiritualist experimentation. Some of the experiences he had during this time solidified his belief in dark and supernatural forces, and he sought ordination as a Satanic priest.”
As part of the preparation, he underwent a period of intense study and fasting so rigorous he was reduced to skin and bones. At the end of this period, he was consecrated a satanic priest and promised his soul to the devil.
In this role as a priest of Satan, Bartolo worshipped Satan as a deity and rejected the Abrahamic God as a tyrant. His priestly duties put him in direct communication with the devil by invoking Satan and other entities known as the “four princes of hell.” Adorning himself in black robes, he would preside over rituals that involved magic, fortune telling and other dark pagan practices. The Black Masses he conducted were a mockery of the Catholic Mass with prayers invoking Satan rather than God. An inverted cross would be placed on the altar, which was often the body of a nude woman. Invectives would have been hurled against Jesus Christ and the Blessed Sacrament profaned. In his role as a teacher and guide, it was Bartolo’s job to instruct satanists in the tenets of Satanism. For a time, he thrived on the feeling of satisfaction he got from leading Catholics away from their faith, but his contentment was short-lived.
“ . . .[R]ather than finding freedom and power through these practices, Bartolo felt increasingly oppressed by them, undergoing nightmares, paranoia, depression, and eventually a mental breakdown that led him to the edge of suicide,” this article describes. “At the bottom of these horrific experiences, Bartolo seemed to hear the voice of his late father impressing upon his heart to return to God.”
This is typical of persons who become involved in Satanism. The same demon who promises them the world eventually turns on them. But even those who consider leaving satanism find this prospect to be extremely difficult, not only because most groups threaten members with death, but because of the catastrophic harm done to the soul. This is why a variety of afflictions manifest in people who worship Satan from depression and suicidal tendencies to outright possession.
Thankfully, Bartolo’s family never stopped praying for his conversion and tried to talk him out of his diabolical way of life. Finally, a Catholic professor at the university, Professor Vincenzo Pepe, met with Bartolo and asked him, “Do you want to die in an insane asylum and be damned forever?”
Monument erected to St. Bartolo Longo in Pompeii, Italy“Bartolo couldn’t ignore the psychological and physiological state he was in,” this article states. “Professor Pepe eventually convinced him to see a Dominican priest.”
That priest was named Father Alberto Radente who guided Bartolo back to the faith. It was under his tutelage that Bartolo developed a great devotion to Mary, particularly through the Rosary, which he saw as a powerful weapon against the effects of his occult practices.
Finally, on the feast of the Sacred Heart in 1865, Bartolo was given absolution and returned to the Catholic Church.
But his journey was not yet complete. Still under Father Pepe’s guidance, Bartolo worked for two years at the Neapolitan Hospital for Incurables as a voluntarily-imposed penance. He prayed, became a third-order Dominican, and made a promise of celibacy to serve God with an undivided heart. He even returned to his Satanist friends where he held up the Rosary and publicly renounced his occult involvement. On one occasion, he interrupted a séance by holding up a medal of Mary and proclaiming, “I renounce spiritualism because it is nothing but a maze of error and falsehood.”
In spite of his fervor, however, he still despaired and could not forgive himself, or imagine how God could forgive him, for all that he had done to hurt the Church. But that all changed one day while on business in Pompeii where he suddenly noticed the poverty of the people, their ignorance and moral corruption and dependence on witchcraft.
“One day in the fields around Pompeii,” he wrote, “I recalled my former condition as a priest of Satan… I thought that perhaps as the priesthood of Christ is for eternity, so also the priesthood of Satan is for eternity. So, despite my repentance, I thought: I am still consecrated to Satan, and I am still his slave and property as he awaits me in Hell. As I pondered over my condition, I experienced a deep sense of despair and almost committed suicide. Then I heard an echo in my ear of the voice of Friar Alberto repeating the words of the Blessed Virgin Mary: ‘One who propagates my Rosary shall be saved.’ Falling to my knees, I exclaimed: ‘If your words are true that he who propagates your Rosary will be saved, I shall reach salvation because I shall not leave this earth without propagating your Rosary.'”
He spent the rest of his life doing so, built the famous Basilica of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary in Pompeii, founded elementary schools and orphanages, and even founded a technical school to help children of convicted criminals a change to live a better life. He was even nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1902 and 1903, for his humanitarian work.
He died on October 5, 1926 and after a review of his writings in 1940, his cause for sainthood was opened. Pope John Paul II beatified him in 1980 and mentioned him in his 2002 Apostolic Letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, saying that he “promoted the Christocentric and contemplative heart of the Rosary.”
The story of Bartolo Longo shines a bright light on the unfathomable depths of God’s mercy that is willing to not only forgive the worst of sins, but has the power to bring about a greater good from the very depths of darkness.
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