When Satan was forced to confess the Immaculate Conception of Mary

December 8, 1854: Pope Pius IX promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.

March 25, 1858: On the Feast of the Incarnation of the Word, the Blessed Virgin appeared in Lourdes to St Bernadette and confirmed the dogma, saying, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

But 20 years earlier, another supernatural and surprising event had already confirmed the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mother of God. And the one who declared it was someone we never would have expected to do so. The event is related by Father Gabriele Amorth, a late exorcist of the Diocese of Rome.

It was the year 1823. The devil had possessed an illiterate 12-year-old boy, who lived in what is today the Italian province of Avellino, near Naples in southern Italy. Two Dominican priests who were in the city, Fr. Gassiti and Fr. Pignataro, were both authorized by the bishop to perform exorcisms.

The priests asked the demon that was possessing the boy a series of questions—among them, one about the Immaculate Conception.

The devil admitted that the Virgin of Nazareth had never been under his power: not even at the first instant of her life, because she was conceived “full of grace” and fully belonging to God.

Although he may be the “father of lies,” the devil can be forced to tell the truth during an exorcism, even in matters of faith. This was how the two exorcists forced him to pay homage to the Virgin and praise her Immaculate Conception, in verse.

Humiliated, the devil was coerced, in the name of Christ, to sing the glory of Mary, and he did so by means of a sonnet in Italian—perfect in form and in theology!

Adapted from Aleteia