The exorcism of Anneliese Michel and the revelations of the devil

The story we are about to tell you, in its wide complexity, transports us to the darkest and deepest reality of the diabolical possession.
This case still feeds fears and misunderstandings even sharply dividing even the members of the Church about the incident, but those who were present at the exorcisms, taking note of what the devil revealed under divine constraint, left posterity a testimony that leaves room for a few doubts.
The story of Anneliese Michel, a girl possessed because of the sins of the men of the Church and the sins of the world, radically upset public opinion and inspired numerous books and cinematographic films for decades to come.
But what really happened? And why were the devil's revelations published only many years after the end of the exorcism?

History
Anneliese Michel was born in Germany on September 21, 1952, more precisely in the Bavarian town of Leiblfing; she grew up in a traditionalist Catholic family and her parents, Josef and Anna Michel, were very attentive in making them receive adequate religious education.

Anneliese at a young age
Anneliese at a young age
His was a serene adolescence: Anneliese was a sunny girl who loved to spend the days in company or playing the accordion, attended the local church and often read the Holy Scriptures.
However, in terms of health, she did not enjoy perfect shape and already in adolescence she developed lung disease, which is why she was treated in a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients in Mittelberg.
After her release she continued studying in a high school in Aschaffenburg, but soon several seizures attributed subsequently to a rare form of epilepsy forced her to stop the course again. The convulsions were so violent that Anneliese became unable to form a coherent speech and had difficulty walking without assistance.
During the numerous hospitalizations, according to what the doctors testified, the girl spent time praying constantly and dedicating herself to strengthening her faith and her spiritual relationship with God.
It was probably in those days that Annaliese developed the desire to become a catechist.
In the fall of 1968, just before her sixteenth birthday, the mother noticed that parts of her daughter's body had grown unnaturally, especially her hands - all for no explainable reason.
At the same time, Anneliese began to behave unusually.

The first symptoms that hinted at an evil influence behind the most common diseases occurred during a pilgrimage: during the coach trip he began, to the amazement of those present, to speak in a very deep male voice. When, later, the pilgrims reached the sanctuary, the girl began to shout numerous curses.
During the night, the girl remained paralyzed on the bed, unable to say a single word: she seemed to be overwhelmed by a superhuman force that oppressed her, chained her, tried to suffocate her.
Father Renz, the priest who accompanied her on the journey and who will later exorcise her, later reported that Anneliese was often jerked by an invisible "power" that made her spin, slam against walls and fall to the ground with great violence.

Towards the end of 1973 the parents, finding the total ineffectiveness of the medical treatment and having the suspicion that it was a possession, turned to the local Bishop to authorize an exorcist to take care of Anneliese.
The request was initially rejected, and the Bishop himself invited him to insist on more detailed medical treatments.

However the situation, despite subjecting the girl to the most important specialists, deteriorated even more: after finding that Anneliese had a strong aversion to all religious objects, she exhibited an extraordinary strength and increasingly spoke in archaic languages ​​(Aramaic , Latin and ancient Greek), in September 1975 the Bishop of Würzburg Josef Stangl decided to allow two priests - Father Ernst Alt and Father Arnold Renz - to exorcise Anneliese Michel according to the Romanum Ritual of 1614.
The two priests, summoned therefore to Klingenberg, planned a tiring and intense journey for exorcism.
During the first attempt, rigorously performed according to the Latin ritual, the surprised demons began to speak without being asked any questions: Father Ernst took the opportunity to try to know the name of these evil spirits who oppressed the body and the mind of the poor girl.
They presented themselves with the names of Lucifer, Judah, Hitler, Nero, Cain and Fleischmann (a damned German religious belonging to the seventeenth century).

Audio recording of exorcisms
The great sufferings that Annaliese was forced to endure quickly had an escalation, accompanied by the sharpening of the diabolical demonstrations.
As reported by Father Roth (one of the exorcists who joined later), the girl's eyes had become completely black, she attacked her brothers with terrible fury, broke any Rosary she handed them, fed on cockroaches and spiders, tore off her clothes, he climbed the walls and made monstrous sounds.
Her face and head were bruised; the color of the skin varied from pale to purple.
His eyes were so swollen that he could barely see; his teeth were broken and chipped from his multiple attempts to bite or eat the walls of his room. Her body became so damaged that it was difficult to recognize it physically.
With the passage of time, the girl stopped feeding on any other substance other than the Holy Eucharist.

Despite this very heavy cross, Anneliese Michel in the few moments in which she had control of her body offered continually sacrifices to the Lord in expiation of sins: she even went to sleep on a bed of stones or on the floor in the middle of winter as a penance for the rebel priests and junkies.
All this, as confirmed by the mother and boyfriend, was specifically asked by the Virgin Mary, who appeared to the girl months earlier.

MADONNA'S REQUEST

One Sunday Anneliese and Peter, her fiancé, had decided to go for a walk in an area far from home.
When she went to the place, the girl's condition suddenly worsened and she stopped walking, such was the pain: just at that moment Mary, the Mother of God, appeared to her.
The boyfriend watched incredulously at the miracle that was taking place in front of him: Annaliese had become radiant, the pain disappeared and the girl was in ecstasy. She claimed that the Virgin was walking with them and asked:

My heart suffers a lot because many souls go to hell. It is necessary to do penance for priests, for young people and for your country. Do you want to do penance for these souls, so that all these people don't go to hell?

Anneliese decided to accept, not entirely aware of what and how much suffering she would have suffered in the last years of her life.
The boyfriend, still upset about what happened, will later say that in Annaliese he saw the Suffering Christ, he saw the Innocent who voluntarily sacrifices himself to save others.

Death, stigmata and cover-up
Around the end of 1975, Father Renz and Father Alt, amazed at the seriousness of the possession, managed to obtain the first results by driving away some of the devils: they reported that the Virgin Mary had promised to intervene to expel them, although not all of them.
This detail was even more evident when both Fleischmann and Lucifer, before leaving the girl's body, were forced to recite the incipit of the Ave Maria.
However the rest, incited several times to leave the priests, said: "We want to leave, but we can't!".
The cross that Anneliese Michel agreed to carry was destined to accompany her to the extreme end of life.
After 10 months and 65 exorcisms, on the first day of July 1976 Anneliese, as she predicted in her letters, died as a martyr at just 24 years of age, exhausted from precarious physical condition.
The autopsy on the body found the stigmata, a further sign of his personal suffering for the redemption of souls.
The outcry that triggered this affair was such that the judiciary decided to investigate the parents, the parish priest and the other priest for manslaughter: the process ended with the sentence of 6 months imprisonment for negligence.
This is despite the numerous testimonies attesting the impossibility of feeding Anneliese, who for some time had been unable to ingest other food except the Sunday Eucharist.
Some exponents of the Church even asked the Holy See to totally remove the figure of the exorcist and the ritual of exorcism, as they believed that this practice threw Christianity in a bad light. Fortunately, this request was ignored by the then Pope Paul VI.
It was precisely the numerous disputes within the Church that forced the religious authorities to seize all the material - audio recordings and notes - collected by the witnesses of the story.
The "taboo" on the case of Anneliese Michel lasted for three decades, or until that day in 1997 when the revelations of the demons who owned the girl were collected and published, making them available to the general public.

Father, I never thought it would be so scary. I wanted to suffer for other people so they don't end up in hell. But I never thought it would be so scary, so horrible. Sometimes, one thinks, "suffering is an easy thing!" ... but it becomes really difficult that you cannot take even a single step ... it is impossible to imagine how they can force a human being. You no longer have any control over yourself.
(Annaliese Michel, turning to Father Renz)

The revelations of the devil
● “Do you know why I fight so much? Because I was precipitated precisely because of men. "

● "I, Lucifer, was in heaven, in Michele's choir." The exorcist: "But you could be among the Cherubim!" Answer: "Yes, I was also this."

● “Judas, I got it! He is damned. That could have been saved, but he didn't want to follow the Nazarene. "

● "The enemies of the Church are our friends!"

● “There is no return to us! Hell is for all eternity! Nobody goes back! Here there is no love, there is only hate, we always fight, we fight each other. "

● “Men are so beastly stupid! They believe everything is over after death. "

● “In this century there will be many Saints, as there have never been. But also many people come to us. "

● “We will lash out against you and we could even more, if we were not tied. We can only how far the chains go. "

● The exorcist: "You are the culprit of all heresies!" Answer: "Yes, and I still have many to create."

● “Nobody wears the cassock now. These modernists of the Church are my work and they all belong to me now. "

● “The one over there (the Pope), the only one keeping the Church standing. The others don't follow him. "

● “Everyone is now pulling out its legs to take Communion and not even kneeling anymore! Ah! My work! "

● "Almost nobody talks about us anymore, not even the priests."

● “The altar facing the faithful was our idea… they all ran after the Evangelicals as prostitutes! Catholics have real doctrine and run after Protestants! "

● “By order of the High Lady I must say that the Holy Spirit must be prayed more. You must pray a lot, because the punishments are close. "

● “The encyclical Humanae Vitae is very important! And no priest can marry, he is a priest forever. "

● "Wherever abortion law is passed, all hell is present!"

● “Abortion is murder, always and in any case. The soul in embryos does not reach the beatific vision of God, it arrives up there in Heaven (it is Limbo), but even unborn children can be baptized. "

● "Too bad that the Synod (Vatican Council II) is over, it made us very happy!"

● “Many Hosts are desecrated because they are given on the hands. They don't even realize! "

● “I wrote the new Dutch catechism! It's all falsified! " (NOTE: the devil refers to the congregation that eliminated references to the Trinity and Hell in the catechism of the Netherlands).

● “You have the power to drive us away, but you don't do it anymore! Don't even believe it! "

● "If you had any idea how powerful the Rosary is ... it's very strong against Satan ... I don't want to say it, but I'm forced to."