ATLANTA (LifeSiteNews) — Catholic churches will be holding Masses in reparation for and to “bring to nothing” a satanic “black mass” to be held on October 25 in Atlanta, Georgia, intended to “summon” three demons.
The local bishop has noted that this “blasphemous and obscene inversion of the Catholic Mass” will desecrate a consecrated host, the Holy Eucharist – the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ – “in the vilest ways imaginable.”
The “black mass” will be held by the Atlanta chapter of the Satanic Temple, an organization that has previously admitted to defiling and destroying a “consecrated host” for one such event. The hosts must be stolen from a Catholic Church.
Theft and profanation of the Eucharist is made significantly easier by widespread reception of Holy Communion in the hand, as opposed to kneeling and on the tongue.
Archbishop Gregory John Hartmayer of the Archdiocese of Atlanta has denounced the ritual as a “serious sacrilege” and called upon “all Catholics of the Archdiocese of Atlanta to face this attack to our faith through prayer, penance and prayers of reparation.”
He has requested in a memo to clergy, sisters, and diocesan staff that “each parish conducts a Eucharistic Holy Hour with Benediction to honor the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist… as an act of reparation to this proposed sacrilege.”
Some Catholic churches will also be offering up the Sacrifice of the true Mass to counteract the “black mass.” The Mass is the Holy Sacrifice of Calvary renewed, in which God the Son offers Himself to God the Father, and as such is of infinite value.
The pastor of St. Clare of Assisi in Acworth, on the outskirts of the Atlanta metro area, announced a Mass of Reparation planned for October 25 and asked parishioners to pray for the “conversion of all those planning to attend this atrocity,” as well as consider fasting.
Epiphany of Our Lord Byzantine Catholic Church in Roswell has announced the offering of a Divine Liturgy at 3 p.m. on October 25 to “prevent and bring to nothing the planned satanic black mass in Atlanta.”
“Jesus Christ cannot be harmed by any action of theirs, but we are responsible for allowing the Eucharist to be stolen and desecrated,” the church bulletin states.
The Satanic Temple (TST) regularly holds “black masses,” and in 2019, its Houston chapter confirmed that it desecrated a consecrated, sacred Host in hateful and blasphemous words on X.
Although on its website TST claims that members do not believe in the supernatural, it conducts satanic rituals, holds legal religious status as a “church”, advocates for abortion as a religious ritual, and has sued Texas and Indiana over their abortion restrictions on the grounds of “religious liberty.”
Founded in 2013 and recognized as a “church” by the IRS in 2019, TST began as a political organization aiming to reduce the presence of religion in the public sphere. In 2017, after then-President Donald Trump signed a religious freedom executive order, TST co-founder Lucien Greaves declared in a newsletter that TST “must re-evaluate its prior principled refusal to accept religious tax-exemption.”
Since then, the group has claimed that its “deeply held beliefs,” “narrative structure,” and use of symbols and practices makes it a church. It notably describes its “Satanic Abortion ritual” as “a destruction ritual” intended to “cast off notions of shame, guilt, and mental discomfort that a patient may be experiencing due to choosing” to murder her innocent unborn child in the womb.