Atlanta archbishop asks for penance, prayers in response to ‘black mass’

CV NEWS FEED // The Archbishop of Atlanta, Georgia, is asking his diocese for penance and prayers of reparation as a response to a local satanic temple scheduling a “black mass” and selling tickets to the public.

The archdiocesan newspaper reports that Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer, OFM Conv., sent a memo to clergy, sisters, and diocesan staff on October 8, addressing the satanic ritual scheduled for October 25.

The Archbishop asked each parish in the diocese to hold a Eucharistic Holy Hour and Benediction, preferably at 9 p.m. on October 25. 

“Even though tickets are being sold for this event as if it were merely some sort of dark entertainment, this satanic ritual is a serious sacrilege,” Archbishop Hartmayer said. “It is a blasphemous and obscene inversion of the Catholic Mass.”

He added, “Using a consecrated host they claim they obtained illicitly from a Catholic church and desecrating it in the vilest ways imaginable, the practitioners offer it in sacrifice to Satan.”

Archbishop Hartmayer continued that the blasphemous act is a “deliberate attack on the Catholic Mass as well as the foundational beliefs of all Christians.” 

The ritual “mocks our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we Catholics believe is truly present under the form of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist when it has been consecrated by a validly ordained priest.”

Archbishop Hartmayer concluded, “We commend our efforts to the Lord through the loving intercession of Mary, the Mother of God.”