Vatican makes ex-occultist a saint

Bartolo Longo takes a more necromantic role

The Vatican has officially declared Bartolo Longo a saint, recognising a man who once immersed himself in spiritualism and occult rituals before becoming a pillar of Catholic charity and devotion.

Pope Leo XIV canonised Longo during a ceremony in St Peter’s Square witnessed by 70,000 onlookers, many drawn by the astonishing trajectory of the former law student turned religious icon.

Longo was born in 1841 in the town of Latiano in southern Italy. Raised in a Catholic household, his life took a sharp turn when he enrolled at the University of Naples in the 1860s. At that time, spiritualism and anti-clericalism were hot across Europe, and Longo found himself swept up in the intellectual and occult trends of the time.

He participated in séances, spiritist circles, and ritualistic practices that the Church later labelled. He even claimed to have been "ordained" in one of these groups, though it is unlikely that it was a formal Satanic organisation.

After years of deepening involvement, Longo experienced a psychological crisis marked by depression and fear. He later described this period as one of torment and confusion.

A meeting with Dominican priest Alberto Radente led him to abandon spiritism altogether. Longo would condemn the practices he had once embraced, calling them misleading and dangerous. He referred to his past involvement as “satanism” in the moral and spiritual sense, reflecting how he saw his former beliefs in hindsight.

Determined to make amends, Longo joined the Dominican Third Order and devoted his life to charitable work and religious devotion. He restored a dilapidated church in Pompeii, established schools and orphanages, and founded the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary. Miracles were soon reported, and the site became a major centre of Catholic pilgrimage. Until he died in 1926, Longo promoted the rosary with the fervour of someone who had lived on both sides of the spiritual spectrum.

Now, nearly a century later, the Church has made it official: the man who once sought answers in séance circles now has a seat among the saints now has his body worshipped and is supposed to help beyond the grave.

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