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OTTAWA, August 15, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — At least four Catholic priests in the Ottawa archdiocese plan to join a group of Catholics to pray outside the heavy metal bar The Koven this Saturday night while a Satanic black mass takes place inside.

“We’ll be there to pray and intercede, to be a visible sign of the Church’s leadership,” one of the priests, who preferred not to give his name, told LifeSiteNews.

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“We have no intention to interact with any of the patrons…certainly no intention to cause any confrontation or commotion, but simply to be there as spiritual leaders in the community, to bless the people who are going to be there in their prayers and intercessions, so that they will be protected by the Lord’s blessing and graces,” the priest said.

He expects other priests will also attend, given that Ottawa’s Archbishop Terrence Prendergast sent a memo to all “us priests, personally,” inviting them to pray in response to the blasphemous event, the priest said.

The archbishop “gave his guidance and his blessings for us to go to pray,” he told LifeSiteNews. “Certainly that was something that was moving in our hearts as well.”

Prendergast has publicly decried the blasphemous event as hateful and urged all Catholics to pray in reparation for the spiritual harm that is being planned.

“To tamper with and mock the Mass — which is what this satanic ritual does — is hateful and will affect more than those who participate in it,” he told the Catholic Register.

“I am asking intercessory prayer groups to pray for those planning to take part in this [black mass] event so that they turn away from the path of darkness and turn instead towards the light of faith,” he said.

The archbishop will offer Mass at a parish church on the morning of August 17 “in reparation for the harm that will transpire on Saturday evening,” he said.

The black mass is being organized by Nicholas Marc, national director of the Satanic Temple of Canada, and will be held at The Koven on 93 Murray Street at 10:00 p.m. on August 17.

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Marc told Global News that this will be the first public black mass in Canada. In response to enquiries from the archdiocese and LifeSiteNews, he said the ritual will involve blasphemy but that a consecrated host will not be used.

Prayers outside The Koven to ‘console Our Lord’

The priests will be joined Saturday night by lay Catholics in silent prayer outside The Koven in a gathering organized by Michael Dopp of St. Maurice Parish in Nepean, along with fellow parishioner John Pacheco.

Dopp first heard about the black mass after his parish priest mentioned it at daily Mass on Tuesday, which his wife attended.

“The next day, my wife thought that she should go down and be present there, and the image coming to her was the image of the cross, where Mary and the disciples stood at the foot of the cross to be a consolation to Our Lord as He was crucified,” Dopp told LifeSiteNews.

“Here, too, at this perverse event, Our Lord is being mocked and blasphemed and she wanted to be present to Him in consolation.”

Dopp sent out an email asking people to join them.

While many Catholics will be praying in their parishes, “I would ask you, however, to consider making a public witness to our faith and standing with me at the site of this evil,” he wrote.

“It is time to be courageous.”

He also asked people to remain in prayer until the bar closes. 

“It will be a late, long, and difficult night. But it will also be a night of many graces,” wrote Dopp. 

PETITION: Stop Satanic black mass in Ottawa! Sign the petition here.

The group will meet at the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral at 9:30 p.m. and proceed down to The Koven, about a five-minute walk away.

According to the priest who spoke to LifeSiteNews, it’s “the desire” of Archbishop Prendergast to be at Notre Dame Cathedral himself “to actually bless the people on the way there, while he takes the time to intercede with the rest of the people in the Cathedral” where a prayer vigil will also take place.

He and his brother priests will “do prayers of protection for the people. If anyone wants any holy water or blessed salt, properly blessed and exorcised, we’ll bring our books for that purpose.”

Dopp told LifeSiteNews that while other groups will be “doing different things” the “sole purpose of this is for us to be there to pray, for all those involved, those in the city, to pray against the evil that’s being committed.”

“We’ll be circling around the block of the pub… Just going out two by two circling the block, praying our rosary in silence, for this particular intention, praying in some ways to contain the evil.”

The priests will be praying “in front of or very close to the entrance of the pub with a crucifix and I think they are going to be doing more audible prayers,” Dopp said. 

Timing of blasphemous ritual ‘curious’ 

“The principal objectives of the [Catholic] gathering [are] to honor Jesus, for reparation for this blasphemy, and to witness to lost and confused souls who are participating in it,” Pacheco told LifeSiteNews.

“Although the [black mass] organizers claim that it’s just an expression of personal liberty and freedom, in reality it is quite the opposite, it is a bondage to the devil who is actually real,” he said.

Moreover, while organizers of the black mass “have claimed that a consecrated host will not be used…we can hardly take their word for it,” added Pacheco.

“We know that the Eucharist is used in conventional black masses and its desecration represents the exact inversion of what Catholics do: worship and adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. That is why it is all the more necessary for us to show up and oppose this desecration near the place it is happening as a sign of reparation and resistance.”

Pacheco said he finds it “curious” that the blasphemous event “falls within two Marian feast days” —  August 15, the Assumption, and August 22, the Queenship of Mary.

“When I first heard about the black mass the first thing that came into my head was the Rosary Bowl” taking place in Ottawa’s Lansdowne Park on August 22, he told LifeSiteNews.

“The timing is just too coincidental.”

He urged Catholics to attend the Rosary Bowl, the first in Canada, “to hasten Our Lady's victory over the devil in making known her powerful intercession before God.”

“As the spiritual attacks increase, Catholics need to become more and more publicly engaged in their faith in order to evangelize and reintroduce Canadians to their Christian and Catholic heritage.”