Tucker Carlson Show: w/ Exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger (Transcript)

One, as I mentioned, their natural law, their nature. They’re structured a specific way. The second thing is once the demons made their choice, their will became fixed in a specific way. This is one of the reasons why when you deal with them as an exorcist, they almost seem obsessive-compulsive. Even when it goes bad for them, they’ll still tend towards that thing which they chose, the sin that they committed. And so their tendency is towards that, so they’re fixed by that.

And then the main thing is, if you remember in the Gospels, Christ says to the apostles before he sends them, he said, “All power was given to me in heaven and earth, all power.” That means the demons even know that they can’t do anything without Christ’s permission. So in the spiritual warfare landscape, we know — and this is as an exorcist — it actually brings me a lot of confidence because I don’t have to worry about if it turns into the type of thing where I get shellacked a little bit during a session or whatever the case is. I know Christ is still controlling and metering how much and what they can and cannot do.

And we know this too, because if you remember, you made the mention of it before — when the demons actually approached Christ to ask to go into the pigs.

TUCKER CARLSON: I was just thinking that exactly, on the other side of the lake.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, so they can’t even enter into the pigs without his permission. And so nothing they do can occur without his permission. And so Christ has complete control over the spiritual landscape, the spiritual battle. He has complete control over it. And so they know what they can and cannot do.

The first time that actually really occurred to me was I had this one case where this demon — because when they take possession, unless it’s a perfect possession, but if it’s a partial possession, they take possession of a part of the body, and from there they can affect the rest of the person. And so the demon was possessing this woman’s lower back, and I commanded him to tell me, “Why are you possessing that part?” He says, “I don’t know.” So I commanded him, “Why not? What do you mean you don’t know?” And he said, “When I entered, Christ restricted me to this part of the body.”

And that’s when it made me realize he has control over everything. When they can manifest, how long they can manifest, the kind of manifestation they can actually do, how they can attack the person that’s possessed, how they can attack us even in our ordinary temptations and things like that. And in other ways, he regulates all of it ultimately. And then you begin to realize too over the course of time, it’s ultimately for our spiritual benefit.

What Are Demons?

TUCKER CARLSON: The experience is for our spiritual benefit. Yes, I believe that. Okay, so what are — if you don’t mind, we could just start at the beginning, big picture. What are demons?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: So, actually, according to Pseudo-Dionysius, and then also Thomas Aquinas, and then pretty much the whole theological tradition from that time, from Dionysius on, basically held that in the very beginning when God created, what he did is he created the entire hierarchy of angels instantaneously all at once. And these angels were created — all the angels were created — and Thomas Aquinas talks about what they call the three instances of the angels.

So when they were first created, how they understand things is the opposite of ours. So when we want to know something, we’ll actually study a number of different individual things that are like that so we can get a general sense, and then from that we’ll abstract a kind of a conceptual understanding of what these things actually are, what their nature actually is. But that’s because we use our senses to come to know things, right? And this is why even as human beings we know that if someone isn’t in contact with their senses, we know there’s something wrong with them, right?

Whereas the demons, the angels and also the demons are the exact opposite. All their knowledge was infused, so they know exactly what the essence and nature of every created thing that exists. And this is actually a diagnostic that you can use in session because we get people that try and fake that they’re possessed. And there’s a variety of reasons why they do that. And so — one of the things is if you ask them a technical theological or philosophical question, if it’s a human being, you can see they have to think about it and then they’ll kind of reason their way through it. That’s not how demons work. They’ll immediately give you the answer, just immediate. They’ll just say it’s X, because they don’t have to think, because for them all their knowledge is infused, both the concepts, but then as things occur —

TUCKER CARLSON: Have you ever seen demons answer esoteric questions?

Demons Demonstrating Supernatural Knowledge

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes. Yeah. I’ve actually — there’s been cases. I had a case. It’s one that I’m actually working on right now where the demons in this particular case have made theological distinctions that there’s no way this person could have ever known those distinctions. Let me give you an example. So he made the distinction between consummatis and finitum est, which is a Latin phrase. So consummatis is that the sacrifice is complete. So in relationship to the sacrifice of Christ, he says consummatis, and then he gives up his spirit, right? So it’s completed. He’s finally completed everything that was necessary in order for our full redemption and our full healing and all of that. But it’s not finished yet. The finishing occurs once he’s buried. So they have to take him down, Our Lady embraces him, and then they put him in the tomb, right? So he made that distinction. And this is one of those indicators that you’re not going to see those kinds of distinctions being made by a human being who has never studied theology in any sense.

TUCKER CARLSON: And this is not a person who has?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: No, nothing. I mean, she finished high school and that’s about it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Seriously?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, yeah. And there’s other times when they’ve made distinctions that are just like — in fact, one time, in the Catholic tradition, we actually believe Our Lady was assumed into heaven because she was so pure and so perfect and sinless that God assumed her body into heaven. And so, it was the feast of that day and I was doing a series of exorcisms and I asked the demon — or I commanded him to tell me — I mentioned the fact that this was her moment of greatest glory and he just looked at me flatly. Demons lie all the time, but you know when they’re telling the truth. There’s ways we can ferret that out too, but they’ll just pan you and just say, “No, that’s not how that works.”

And I said, “What was it then?” He said, “It was her moment of greatest triumph. She had gone through life without committing sin, and now she’s entering into heaven triumphant.” I said, “Was it the crowning of heaven, queen of heaven and earth, because we believe that as Catholics?” And he says, “No, that was her moment of greatest honor.” I’m like, okay, that makes sense because honor is praise or recognition for excellence. And so God was recognizing her excellence in this way. And so I finally just commanded him, “Well, what was it?” He said, “Standing under the cross in perfect virtue.” Later he revealed that he said, other than the actual passion and death of Jesus Christ, he said it was the most glorious event in all of history.

TUCKER CARLSON: The demon said that.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: The demon said that.

The Demon’s Voice and Physical Manifestations

TUCKER CARLSON: So I’m assuming that the demon is speaking through the voice of the person he possesses.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Sometimes they speak through the person’s own voice. There are other times where they’ll assume the characteristics of voice that is proper to their nature. And so Thomas Aquinas makes the observation that the way they manifest— so one of the ways that you know you’re dealing with something that’s demons, we call it morphing. The person will actually change shapes, their countenance or their face will change. And then, I mean, it takes on the characteristics that are proper to the demon’s personality.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’ve seen people’s faces change?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Morphing is about 90% of what you see.

TUCKER CARLSON: What are the changes like?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: It’s very subtle all the way from just recently I prayed over a rather prominent individual and when I looked at him after the prayers, it can be something very subtle where it’s just, there’s a complexion that in the writers and the authors, they call it the cherrywood look where they take on this face where their face turns like this cherrywood color that’s impossible for us as human beings to have or replicate on a natural level.

TUCKER CARLSON: Cherrywood.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Cherrywood. Red-brown color that you just— you’re like, yeah, that’s not a natural color. So it’ll be everything from something very subtle like that all the way to complete morphing where they change into the shapes of animals. One case— actually, there’s been a couple of cases I’ve had where women, very feminine looking, all of a sudden morph into looking completely like a man. So you see, these are some of those— the morphing while you’re sitting there, while you’re praying, usually is when it actually ends up happening.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you look down and the person you’re praying over is now a man?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Looks like a man, yeah. And it’s not just me seeing it, because we have a team that’s there present at the time for a variety of different reasons. They provide different functions, but— and they’ll very often see the same thing. So they’re all seeing the same thing.

TUCKER CARLSON: Have you seen people’s pupils change?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes, that’s pretty common. So a lot of times they’ll hyperdilate and turn very black, or they’ll— another more common thing, I don’t see it too often, because certain exorcists will see some things much more regularly than others, but a lot of times their eyes will roll all the way into the back of their head, so all you see is white. So you’ll see those. So those are the kinds of things that you’ll actually see. But the morphing is one of the, we call it one of the preternatural signs that you know someone’s possessed. You know they’re possessed.

How Demons Attack the Exorcist

TUCKER CARLSON: How do their voices change?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: There’s two things that they change. A lot of times they’ll change in just the tone. They’ll start sounding like them. Man sometimes. Now, once in a while, the demons will use the person’s own vocal voice. And part of the reason they want to do that is because they don’t want you to hear what the characteristics of their own voice.

The reason I say that is because of the fact that an experienced exorcist— it’s like a boxer, you know. When you box, when you get into the ring, you can watch all sorts of videos about this guy’s technique. It’s not until you get in the ring and box with this guy, that you actually get a sense of, okay, this is what this guy is actually like.

So the reason that demons don’t want to attack you, especially if you’re an experienced exorcist, is based on the philosophical principle, which is the cause is always some way in the effect. So anytime they attack you, they reveal something about themselves in that process, and then you can use it against them later. So as an experienced exorcist, they really don’t want to get involved with you, although a lot of times Christ still requires them, but they don’t want to attack you because then once they attack you, you know, you can find out what his psychology is, what his patterns of thinking are, etc., when he’s attacking you.

TUCKER CARLSON: How did they attack you?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: One is the oppression where they attack you from the outside. The other one is that it’s not an obsession in the proper sense because obsession is something that’s ongoing. But what they’ll do is they have the ability to affect our imagination and our emotions. So a lot of times what they’ll do is when they attack the exorcist, they’ll put a perspective on an image in your imagination.

So for example, a guy when he’s first married, he thinks his wife is wonderful. He gets all this emotional delight because our emotions are moved by what’s in our imagination, the perspective specifically. So when he’s first married, she’s wonderful, she’s great, I love my wife, look how beautiful she is. She just brought me a beer. Isn’t that wonderful? You know, etc. Then after 10 years, his perspective on her changes because they’ve had fights and things of that sort. And so when he sees her, even though she hasn’t changed, his perspective on her, and so his emotional response changes.

Well, demons can put that perspective on your imagination. So they can actually do that. And this is one of the ways that they can actually affect relationships. In fact, the first thing they ever do in a marriage is they try and put a perspective on one of the spouses or both of the spouses to psychologically divide the people so the person thinks they see something bad in the other spouse when it’s actually not there.

So, but anyway, what they’ll do is when they attack the exorcist, they’ll put that perspective on your image and your imagination, but that perspective then tells me something about his psychology. So I’ve written 3 books or 4 books actually in psychology from the way St. Thomas Aquinas understands it, right? And developed it based upon that. It does incorporate a lot of the stuff in modern psychology, but it actually gives a foundation to it based on an authentic anthropology and not just some wacky view that we have of human beings.

And so what I— the first time I started to be an exorcist, I just started watching the psychological patterns of demons, because I figured, well, they have a natural law. In other words, each demon has its own natural law that it’s inclined to specific things and not to others. So as human beings, we have a natural law because we’re inclined toward things like marriage, eating, living in community and society, and that type of thing. So we have a set of inclinations that God placed in us. Demons have that same thing, except theirs is tailored to their specific nature, because each demon’s nature is different. They’re species, and technically speaking, is different.

And so that’s why in a session, when they manifest, when one demon comes to the fore and the other one leaves, the morphing will change to accommodate that. And so you immediately know, okay, I’m dealing with this guy rather than that guy. And actually, after you’ve dealt with the same demon over and over again, you can do a session and just start out on a new case, and then once he manifests, you’re like, you recognize who he is.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’ll see the same demon in different people?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes. Yeah.

The Nature and Origin of Demons

TUCKER CARLSON: How many— so this— I have so many questions. I hope you’re prepared for a long interview. This brings us back to my initial question before I sidetracked you with too many other questions, which is what are they and where are they from?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: So they’re basically pure spirits. They don’t have a body. They can act upon us who have bodies, and they can act upon physical things, but they don’t have a body, so they’re pure spirits. They only have two faculties, an intellect and a will. They don’t have emotions. But they experience emotions in their will.

So when they were first created, the entire hierarchy of angels, and they’re in the billions because it’s actually part of the theological tradition that every human being has their own guardian angel, and that’s from the lowest rank because there’s 9 of them, the 9 choirs. They have the lowest, that’s just from one of them. So there’s literally billions of these, but they’re all created instantaneously at once.

And then according to the theological writers, that meant that they were created into a perfect state of knowing because as I mentioned before, they just have to think about something, use their will to move their mind to think about something and they immediately exhaust everything that they can possibly know about that thing to the degree of their intelligence. That’s why when you ask them questions as I mentioned before, they never think about it, they just give you the answer. Because they don’t have to sit and reason it out, they just immediately know it.

So that first instance, they were created in an act of knowing, and that meant they knew who God was, who they were, what their nature was, what he was asking of them as an assigned task. Because God, every single angel that was created, it was given— God created him to perform a specific task. And so, for example, Gabriel was basically created. His task was to do the Annunciation to Our Lady. And we see Michael, St. Michael, his originally assigned task is, according to the theological tradition, is that he’s actually the guardian angel of the elect.

That’s why he was originally the guardian angel of the Jewish religion, but then once they apostatized and because they refused to accept Christ, he then became the guardian angel of the elect of the Christian religion. And that’s also why we read in Scripture in the book of Revelation, Saint Michael was given the power by God to cast the demons down from heaven after they fell because his goal was to protect the elect that were in heaven. And so that was his function.

So they’re all given an assigned task. So they know all these things. They also know all about the angels behind us. They also know what Satan, or at the time Lucifer, is being tempted with as far as his fault. Because they were created in this state and then they have this act of knowledge, that’s their first instance, and then there’s a concomitant act of will of delight. They see how magnificent God’s creation is and how beautiful it is. Then they have to make their choice. Are you going to do what God is asking or not?

Now in that choice there’s something very specific that has to happen. There is some perfection that they see that is above them that they have to be willing to let go of. Otherwise, in order to perform their task, otherwise they’re going to be damned if they don’t, basically. They have to be willing to let go of this.

And basically, and even under duress in session, you can compel the demons, they’ll admit it, that their first sin, even though it was usually pride or envy of some sort, because that envy of some perfection that someone had, that their first sin was pride or envy, but they failed to sacrifice that thing that they wanted. They literally wanted something that God had not intended for them.

And so, and this is why at the core of it, Thomas Aquinas makes an observation. He says, in the end, there’s one thing that God wants from every intelligent creature, and that’s sacrificing his will to him. So then that meant they had to accept their task, which is below this perfection. So they had to accept this lower task. But then, so then they made their choice, and because unlike us, you know, Tucker, as a general rule, human beings are pretty stupid.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: And so that’s why—

TUCKER CARLSON: Been there.

Demonic Hierarchy and Their Influence on Society

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, exactly. That’s why God has mercy on us, right? Because you’re just like, man, this guy’s just clueless, right? And because a lot of them, basically that just means that we don’t have full knowledge of what we’re doing. The demons had absolute pure knowledge. So when they made their choice, it was unadulterated malice. They knew that God even gave them the grace to accept their task, but they absolutely refused to accept it.

The third of the angels that fell, because we know that from the book of Revelation where it talks about how the dragon swept a third of the stars down. And that’s the— the fathers of the church say that that was an indicator that a third of the angels fell and became demons as a result of it. So the demons are actually fallen angels whose will is now fixed. So once they make their choice, it’s all in. It’s not half-hearted. No, it’s a full choice. They’re either going to accept God’s will or they’re not going to do it.

And then the third instance of existence is, right after that, then if they refuse to accept their task, then they’re damned immediately. So they immediately experience what we call in the Catholic theology the pain of loss. They immediately experience, “I’m never going to see God. I’m never going to see him.” And that’s where our ultimate happiness is. So they know they’re going to be miserable. Plus they have remorse of conscience and all those things because they’re intelligent creatures.

But then of those who are grateful, then they immediately got to see God. And then, of course, we read from scripture there was a battle that ensues, which is a battle of the wills in heaven, because that’s all they have is intellect and will. They battle through their wills. But then at a certain point, God said, “That’s enough,” and then he sends St. Michael to cast them down. So, it’s a long-winded way of saying that basically demons are fallen angels who are now bent on malice and evil.

The True, the Good, and the Beautiful

TUCKER CARLSON: Bent on malice and evil. I have my own theories about what that looks like. Let me just list a few. Violence.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Chaos, division among people, the destruction of beauty.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: That’s correct.

TUCKER CARLSON: Those are the obvious that I notice all around me.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Are there others?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, no, that’s correct. I mean, under those, you would see, sometimes we say the true, the good, and the beautiful is what they work against.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: And truth, I’m sorry.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the obvious one.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah. So they’ll mitigate against that and that’s part of that perspective, putting those perspectives on you so that you don’t judge the reality, the situation, the truth of what it really is. I mean, the historic definition of truth is the adequation of intellect to thing, that my mind conforms to the way the thing is in reality and we know this intuitively. If somebody is telling us that this wall over here is purple, you look at it and it’s brown. You’re like, “No, it’s not.” So you know that there’s something wrong because their mind isn’t in congruity with reality. They don’t know the truth about that.

Well, what they do is they try and change your perspective on the reality of the situation, and that’s how they cause damage among human beings and relationships and marriage, which is one of the things they’re majorly attacking now — they’re doing marriages. But basically their goal is to get us to commit sin and basically place ourselves in this point where we’re damned as a result of what we do.

Cycles of Demonic Attack

TUCKER CARLSON: You said recently we’re seeing a lot of attacks on marriages. That suggests there are cycles in the behavior of demons.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: There is, in the sense that the natures of things are infused in them, but also every physical or every individual thing that’s happening throughout the universe is infused in their mind as it happens. So if they want to know what’s going on in Saturn, they just think of Saturn and boom, they see what’s going on there. It’s the same thing with this. If they want to know what we’re talking about, all they have to do is think about the concept of humanity and look inside of that and see us as individuals of human beings, and then they can see what we’re actually talking about. That’s how their mode of knowing is.

This is why they can’t be in error about things. Even the demons are not erroneous. A lot of times when you can trick them, it’s because they’re basing their choice or their things on the most likely thing based upon what you said. They’re not in error about what you said. They may not know what your intention is. I’m talking about like in session. But anyway, the point being is that they basically go through phases where their goal is ultimately to destroy the Christian religion. That’s their goal ultimately, because they know deep down that is the religion that Christ established, period.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s so obvious. Yeah. I mean, I didn’t even understand. I still don’t understand most of this, but I just— watching the intent of almost everything, say the US government does, it’s aimed at Jesus.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, or even the mainstream news media. I mean, a lot of times they’re just, you know, you can talk about anything but Christ, although that dynamic has changed a little bit more recently, a little bit. But generally, it’s Christianity that’s under attack. You can be any other religion you want. You can believe anything, do anything you want, but don’t, whatever you do, don’t be Christian.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, and especially don’t use the J-word except as an epithet.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

America Under Demonic Attack

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, no, I came to this backwards, just sort of noticing like, hmm, I see a pattern here. What is this? That’s how I got interested in this topic. But so do you think the United States specifically, where you live, is under greater demonic attack than it has been?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Historically, yes. And I usually tell people this particular aspect of it. So under Satan, this has been the common experience of exorcists for centuries, that under Satan there are 5 demons and they’re called by different names like the council, the generals, but their job is to execute the plans of Satan that he wants done in this life.

The first one is Baal, who is the spirit of fornication, the spirit of impurity. So when they— in the United States, when they shot down the anti-fornication laws and then plus you have all the problems with pornography and that type of thing as freedom of expression and all that. Once they allowed that, they ceded the territory to Baal.

After Baal, and we get this from St. Paul, he says, “Well, if people give in to lust, then eventually men start sleeping with men and women start sleeping with women.” So the next three — the first one is Asmodeus, which is a demon of impurity, but he’s specifically the demon of homosexuality in men. So if you—

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s his name?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Asmodeus. Yeah, Asmodeus is sometimes how you hear it pronounced as well. So if in cases of possession, if you have a guy that has been possessed and he’s had homosexual experience, it’s a pretty good bet that Asmodeus is one of the possessors.

Naming Demons in Exorcism

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you call him by name?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes, at a certain point. In fact, the ritual that the church has us do tells you to ask the names, and the reason you want the names is because once you know the name of the demon you can actually know a bit about his history because these guys are throughout history, right? So you can actually go and read. Asmodeus is mentioned actually in scripture. You can also study, like for example, the demon Isis. You can actually study the history of the Isis cult and you’ll actually understand certain aspects of his personality because he engendered it.

One of the more recent ones I had was the demon Loki, who’s a demon of mischief. And so once I got the name out of him, I went and researched Loki and this demon was a spitting image of the mythology behind this guy. Getting him under control was very difficult.

TUCKER CARLSON: What does it mean, mischief?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: He was just constantly trying to create havoc and he’s a bit of a jokester and he just doesn’t want to obey commands. And so it was very difficult to get him to be compliant in relationship to doing what he’s supposed to do.

TUCKER CARLSON: And what were the problems that the person possessed by this demon was experiencing?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Excessive religiosity.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: What does that mean?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: It means doing things that are actually spiritually harmful to them under the guise of religion. So like, for example, fasting excessively, or praying to the point where you’re neglecting your duties that you’re supposed to be doing, your duties of your state in life, that type of thing. And so, because Christ expects, like for you as a father, God expects you, “Hey, you got to be taking care of your kids.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, this is something Jesus lectured the Pharisees about.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: He said you’re ignoring your parents because you said this wealth goes to God.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: That’s right. That’s exactly right. It’s the same thing. So you can get people — the way we see it a lot is you’ll get married women who will spend all their time at church and they’re neglecting their family at home, for example.

TUCKER CARLSON: And that’s the product of a demonic attack?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: It can be, in the sense that the demons can begin to foster through temptation. They can foster that type of thinking that “I’m doing a good thing because, hey, look, I’m looking at church.”

TUCKER CARLSON: I get it.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: So when you actually know the duty that God wants you to be doing, taking care of your kids and your husband, etc. So Asmodeus is the demon of homosexuality in men.

TUCKER CARLSON: In women, he’s cast out. Do the impulses leave?

The Noonday Devil and Demons of Homosexuality

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, it’s kind of interesting that you asked that question. I actually had a case that had the Noonday Devil mentioned in Psalm 91 as a possessor. And once I found out who he was, I went and researched in the Fathers, who is this guy? It’s very fascinating. He’s actually the demon of the midlife crisis, according to the— this is the Fathers of the Church, the guys that were around after the Apostles all the way up to about 800, referred to him as the demon of the midlife crisis. But he’s also the demon of acedia, or spiritual sloth.

So once I found out about who he was, I started— but then during one of the sessions, after the sessions, we’ll often talk to the people that are possessed and say, what did you experience? Because a lot of times the demon will communicate to the person or what they’re experiencing. The exorcist won’t see it or hear it, but the person is experiencing what the demon is often going through.

And so he said, well, The Noonday Devil kept crying out to Asmodeus, Asmodeus, Asmodeus. Now, this is a guy that was married to a beautiful young wife with 2 children. And I said, do you have homosexual ideation? And he says, yeah, and I don’t know where it’s coming from. He didn’t have the trauma that’s normally associated with guys that have all that. He didn’t have the psychological history, so I did a prayer to sever the connection between the Noonday Devil and Asmodeus, and boom, from that point on he never had the ideation again.

Now I’m not suggesting that all homosexuality is diabolic, I’m just saying that because people can become homosexual through psychological, there’s a whole psychology behind it, but the demons can drive those kinds of thoughts. You’ll get guys who are normal heterosexual men and all of a sudden they’ll just out of the blue, they’ll get a thought about something like that. Well, that’s not your thought. That’s usually something that’s diabolic.

The difficulty we’re having in our culture though is that we’re forming perverts basically. We keep putting stuff on the news media and then on YouTube and that type of thing where we’re making these associations between this thing and that thing, and over the course of time people’s minds begin formed by that, and so they’re becoming perverted in the process where they automatically presume if a guy’s unmarried he’s got gay, that kind of a thing. Well, that may or may not necessarily be the case. So we’re making those associations.

In women, there’s two demons of homosexuality. The first is Lilith, who is of the more passive feminine kind of homosexual women. These are women that you look at them and like, oh, you seem like a pretty decent looking gal, why don’t you just go get a guy? That type of a thing. So these are women that they’re not acrimonious. They’re actually very passive, more seductive side of things. The other one is Leviathan, and Leviathan is the demon of homosexuality in women of the more aggressive kind. My nickname for them is the women who are heavy on the heels, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah. So these are the butchy women that are very masculine, actually. So you’ll see that kind of a phenomenon actually happen.

Demons, Child Sacrifice, and Abortion

So then I tell people when they actually allowed gay marriage, they ceded our country to that tier of diabolic influence. And then the last one is, there’s some debate whether it’s Moloch or Baphomet, because exorcists have different experiences of it. But Baphomet is the primary demon, although Moloch is also a demon of child sacrifice. But Baphomet is the demon of child sacrifice, abortion. So when they allowed abortion in this country, you have those 5 generals now basically have a gainsay over our country, and so their influence is extremely powerful.

And we know this just by virtue of the fact, like, to try and get rid of abortion is like extracting teeth without Novocaine. It’s just so brutal, difficult to get done. And that’s because the demons empower the people that are keeping it in place because they, the demons, love abortion, basically.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s interesting that child sacrifice seems to be a feature of most religions really, historically around the world. There’s almost no region in the world that we haven’t found evidence of human sacrifice, child sacrifice. So clearly there’s something real there. It’s not like the Incas and some Central African tribe didn’t kind of come up with this because they were talking to each other on the internet. There’s something organic and real about it. What is that?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Well, I think it’s the tendency of demons hoards those specific things.

TUCKER CARLSON: But do the people who participate in child sacrifice, whether it’s abortion or voodoo or muti in Africa or whatever, do they receive power from demons?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Some of them do, actually, but usually in order for them to receive power from it, usually it’s the opposite. They become a subject. There’s a subjection now that they’re under the demons as a result of engaging in that behavior. But there are certain people that are intentionally involved in the occult arts that engage in these specific things to empower themselves.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, for sure. Very common.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah. And it’s exploding.

Pacts with Demons

TUCKER CARLSON: But does it work in the short term? I mean, does it? So the trade is in Haiti, in Africa, here, Santeria. The trade is I pledge allegiance to a demon and in exchange I receive power, wealth.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Does that work?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: The technical term for that is a pact. You enter into a pact with a demon, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Now, a pact is a form of contract, and there are certain aspects of a contract. And so one of the aspects of a contract is there has to be a guarantee that you can fulfill the terms of the contract. Like for example, if you enter into a contract for some guy to mow your lawn, but he doesn’t even own a lawnmower and he’s never going to bother buying one, well, then he can’t fulfill the terms of the contract.

The problem with the demons is because they’re subject completely to Christ and cannot do anything unless he allows it, they can’t guarantee they can fulfill the terms of the contract. So what that basically means is, because of the disordered act of entering into the pact, you can still become subject to them, but they may or may not be able to deliver on their side of the contract.

So I’ve had a case of possession, or more than one, where they entered into a pact with the devil and the devil couldn’t give him anything, but the person ended up possessed as a result of entering into that pact. And destroyed. Fortunately, these people climbed out of it because they actually sought the help and did what they needed to do in order to become liberated from the diabolic influence, but a lot of people just become destroyed.

There are times, however, though, that God will allow the demons to fulfill the terms of the contract. Now, what most people think is that they think, oh, well, the demon’s doing what I’m asking him to do, but what they don’t realize is each individual time he does what they ask, they become more subject to him and it becomes harder and harder to get out from underneath that subject.

TUCKER CARLSON: They’re accruing debt.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Exactly.

How Fr. Ripperger Became an Exorcist

TUCKER CARLSON: How did you get into this?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: I was minding my own business. I’m an academic, because I was teaching in a seminary at the time. And a case in the Archdiocese of Omaha came up and they didn’t have an exorcist. And naively, I just told the Archdiocese, “We’ll get one, just find some priests.” But at that time, there were only 13 exorcists in the country and about 5 knew what they were doing. So there were very, very few.

And so eventually they ended up asking me to do it because I had written a book in psychology where I had consulted with a number of different exorcists to deal with the interchange between how demons affect us psychologically, because there are specific patterns that you’ll begin to see that are distinguished from something that’s just pure mental illness as opposed to something that’s purely diabolic, which is different from the intermix. So if you saw the movie Nefarious, that’s that interchange between the human and the diabolic psychology that you saw.

But anyway, so they asked me to do the case. And so once I agreed to do it, it had to do with the fact that when the case was diagnosed, the demon manifested to me the first time because the pastor I was with asked me to pray over this guy. So I did and boom, immediately manifested, the demon did. And that was an indicator that usually when demons will manifest in relationship to a priest, it’s an indicator that that’s the priest that’s going to liberate usually. And that’s because demons are very tuned to the power structure. And so they know this is the guy that Christ has intended for me to, take their slacking from.

So I started being their exorcist. I did that for about 2 years. And then I was actually moved to take care of a problematic parish to clean it up. But I continued doing exorcisms for the Archdiocese of Omaha and one other, and a couple of other dioceses actually. Again, because there was virtually nobody that was available.

And then in 2011, Bishop Slattery of Tulsa asked me to found a society of priests that this is exclusively what we do. We only do exorcism work. We don’t do parish work. I do lecture publicly, but primarily about this particular area to inform the people about what they can do to keep themselves protected. So that’s how I kind of got dragged into it. And so I’ve been doing exorcisms for about 18 years.

The State of Exorcism in the US Today

TUCKER CARLSON: So when you started, there were 5 capable exorcists, you said. How many are there now in the US?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Well, right now there’s probably about 130 to 140 exorcists that are mandated or named by their bishops. But out of that 140, maybe only about 20 to 25 I would feel comfortable sending someone knowing that they’re going to get the help they actually need. Because this is historically in the Catholic Church, this was done by mentorship. So even though I’ve written a book on diabolic influence, that’s the academic side. But you have to sit in on session and see how you actually have to handle these guys because you’re basically handling like a piece of nitroglycerin. You can talk to them about don’t do this and don’t do that, but they actually have to see it. And so there was a mentorship. Well, that mentorship collapsed in the ’50s, which we talked about before. And so now we’re getting that back up off the ground. And so a lot of the guys haven’t been under that good mentorship, and that’s why there’s so few that actually are very proficient at the clinical exorcists.

TUCKER CARLSON: Like practicing.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. It sounds like a potentially dangerous job.

Staying Safe as an Exorcist: Spiritual Discipline and Protection

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah. Okay. So that’s a very good observation. The way it works is, the church actually has, it’s called the prae-notanda or the note, which is basically a series of dos and don’ts, right? But there’s also ones that’s also part of the mentorship too, is to be trained. Look, there’s a set of guardrails. If you stay in your lane and you don’t get out of that lane theologically by doing something that’s theologically daft or it’s bad, you’re relatively safe. Nothing grave is going to happen to you.

Now, it doesn’t mean that you don’t get beat around a little bit. You’re stepping into a boxing ring, right? And so that’s why a lot of times they’ll afflict you with certain thoughts or they’ll do certain things to try and affect your health and things like that. But that’s one of the reasons why the society of priests that I started, we are semi-contemplative. We pray 3 to 4 hours a day. And we pray primarily to, in addition to maintain that unity with Christ, because as long as you stay with Christ, you’re safe. It’s when you try to branch out on your own or you think that it’s actually you liberating these people and not Christ, that’s when you’re going to get taken to the woodshed.

And so what we do is we pray through the 40, and it deals with all the different kinds of diabolic influence, everything from normal temptation to oppression to obsession, to keep us protected. So we have a specific set of prayers to create a protection by keeping us under Christ and keeping that protection in place. So if you stay in your lane, you’re relatively safe. It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to get beat around a little bit.

But the good news about that is, it’s also the first 2 years of the exorcism that is the worst. And the reason being is because the demons are probably contesting every single area of your weakness, and they know your weaknesses because they’ve been watching you your whole life. And so they’ll start picking at certain areas of your moral weaknesses and things of that sort, or even psychological tendencies that may not be necessarily healthy, and they’ll start picking at those things. And so you have to really shore those up in a hurry because otherwise you’re going to get taken down. I’ve seen a lot of priests actually that became exorcists initially who didn’t get that cleaned up and did get taken down. So you have to be very—

TUCKER CARLSON: I believe that.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah. So you have to really stay in your lane and do everything you can to eradicate any defect, spiritual, moral, or otherwise, that you might have.

Demonic Forces and Positions of Power

TUCKER CARLSON: So it’s very obvious to me that demonic forces go after Christian leadership.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s one of the reasons so many of them are rotten. I feel sorry for them. And also leadership in general. Like, the U.S. Congress has a much higher incidence of diseased personal lives?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: That’s right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Than the American population. And that’s not an accident because they have authority. I mean, that’s just what I’ve noticed. Do you think that’s true?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Oh, I think that’s absolutely true. I mean, as far as the Christian leaders, a lot of times what happens is they’ll start out with good intentions. Totally. But then when they get to that position of power, it attracts the demons. Because for demons, they’re cut off from God, they no longer have grace. They don’t even know the economy of grace. And by that I mean in the sense they don’t even know what helps that God is going to give to different people to get their lives together. They have no access to any of that knowledge. They don’t have any of that. They hate each other. They can’t stand each other. So they don’t even have the common—

TUCKER CARLSON: They hate each other?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, they completely hate each other. Of course they do. Yeah, and so as a result of that, the only reason they get along is because they have a common end, which is to take us down, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, you’re describing people I know.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Well, I’m getting there. So the only thing that’s left with the demons is because they were created in a hierarchy, so how intelligent they are, they have a will that’s proportionately intelligent, as strong to that intelligence, and different demons have different degrees of intelligence. And so basically what that means is that one demon’s will is stronger than another. So in hell, there’s only one thing that’s left, and that’s raw power. But it’s also melded with malice and self-servitude and that type of thing.

And so what happens is, when you see people that go into positions of power, that attracts the demons because they know, “If I can get control of this guy, then I can basically use his power that he has to cause all this other damage or to take other people down.” So as I mentioned, a lot of the Christian leaders, they go with the right intentions. But when you’re talking about politics or in the civil affairs where power is involved, sometimes people go in with the right intentions, but then they get corrupted afterwards because the demons start — when you get that high profile, the demons are going to be really spending a lot of time and energy trying to take you down.

But the other side of it is too, and we’ve seen this even in the Catholic Church, they’ll get the wrong types of people into positions of authority. They know this particular person has this defect. They’ll give the person the inspiration: “You should go into politics. You should rule. You should be the governor.” And so then they’ll incline the person to go into that governorship knowing that because of this person’s psychological compatibility with the demons, that they can manipulate this person to cause all sorts of damage.

TUCKER CARLSON: Man, have I seen that a lot. Yeah, I mean, you must watch the news with your jaw open because you know what’s happening.

Communism and Diabolic Psychology

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Well, I watch the news from a distance because it’s almost like being in session. Like, “Oh yeah, I just saw that this afternoon.” Really? Yeah. In fact, that’s actually one of the reasons — there are 2 things that I think you find interesting. I actually did a series on how communism and diabolic psychology are identical. When you strip the veneer away of one being political and the other one being from the spirit world, we peel that veneer away, the patterns of thinking are exactly the same.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is that true? Can you — that’s worth lingering on for a moment. Can you describe what you see as similar between the way demons behave and the way that the Bolsheviks—

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, I mean, well, we see it even happening in our own country in the sense that demons always present a temptation as this pie-in-the-sky great thing that you’re going to get, and you’re going to get all this pleasure and joy, and everything’s going to turn out right. But they’ll present it as, “This is a great thing, you’re going to get this pleasure, you’re going to get power” — but then once they get you, and you give into the temptation, from there they take you down.

It’s the exact same thing in communism. It’s a pie-in-the-sky thing: “We’re going to have nirvana because there’s not going to be any private property, you’re never going to have to worry, the government’s going to provide everything, everything’s going to be peaceful and joyful, and it’s because of capitalism that there’s all these wars.” They sell you a bill of goods, they get you to sign off on it, and then from there they take you down, and that’s exactly what the communists do.

This is one of the reasons why, one of the patterns in relationship to politicians in this country that are clearly communists — I always watch — I said you can just watch the pattern. They’ll start out idealistic, but I always tell people give them a couple years and you’re going to see the malice.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh yeah.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Hurt people. Yes, exactly. Because they think it’s justified to achieve this good thing in the end. But here’s another one.

TUCKER CARLSON: You see that exact pattern of behavior in demons?

Diabolic Obsession and Its Signs

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, in forms of temptation, when they diabolically obsess people about certain things. Obsession is where the demons besiege their imagination, their emotions to such a degree that the person can’t really think outside the box.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh man, who hasn’t been there?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, well, that’s it. And this is one of the reasons why—

TUCKER CARLSON: But from that, you can self-liberate just where you’re totally distracted all the time because you’re focused on this one thing. Usually it’s lust-related, but not always. Sometimes it’s greed-related, or—

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Right. And a lot of times, the way you know it’s diabolic is if it’s from yourself, you can use it like, “Okay, I got to put that aside,” and then you go on. But when it’s from the demons, you’ll kick it out and it comes back, you kick it out and it comes back, and it’s kind of this battle of just trying to keep that thing at bay.

TUCKER CARLSON: Being angry at people?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Envy?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, another sign of diabolic obsession is it’ll switch on and it’ll switch off without any external stimulus. You’ll wake up in the morning just torqued, you’re like, “Why am I mad?” Or something will happen and you’re just like, “Why am I sad or why am I angry at this particular person?” And so one of the forms of diabolic, when they affect people psychologically, you see this even with people getting fired for no reason whatsoever because the demons step in and say, “Hey, you got to get rid of this person.” Put a perspective that there’s something wrong with this person. Then you go back afterwards, after the person’s gone, you say—

TUCKER CARLSON: Like if you have the highest-rated show on TV and all of a sudden they fire you one day.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, exactly. That’s what — no, but that’s just it.

TUCKER CARLSON: So I shouldn’t have said that.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Well, yeah, but it’s proof though that the demons — anybody that is starting to get a little too close to how the demons are functioning in society or in a corporation or whatever the case — you start getting, you start really seeking the truth regardless of the personal cost, then it was like, “We got to get this guy out of here.” And then, technically, the term for that is a snare. They can put a perspective on a particular individual thinking, “There’s something wrong with this guy, we got to get rid of him.”

TUCKER CARLSON: That is fascinating. I’m sorry, I never should have tied it to myself. This is certainly not about me, but I just couldn’t resist that.

Satan as Possessor: The Case of St. Joan of Arc

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: So, here’s another one in relationship to the politics, but you’ve probably even seen this even in the news media industry. So one case that I had, it’s the only case I’ve ever had of Satan as the possessor. Those kinds of cases are very, very rare, even historically. And the only reason I thought he was actually— this has got to be the guy— is because he was trying to kill this woman that he was possessing.

And he was also— for 3 straight days, I beat this guy ruthlessly in a session, and he just lied all the time, even when it would go better for him if he just told the truth, he would just lie, which is what Christ said about him. He said he was a liar and a murderer from the beginning. Yeah.

So, but anyway, at a certain point, what came out was, so in heaven, there are nemeses, just as St. Michael fights against the demons. There’s nemeses in heaven against the demons. So the demons actually have nemeses, specific holy people in heaven that actually combat deal with them. And very often it’s because of the fact, like for example, the demon against the noonday devil is actually St. Catherine of Alexandria because of the fact that she conquered him by conquering that particular aspect of human nature, which is the tendency to just being slothful and lazy, right?

Well, in this particular case with Satan, the nemesis was St. Joan of Arc. And the reason it was St. Joan of Arc, as it starts to come out in the case, because there’s very— you have a series of sessions and stuff starts to be revealed about the dynamics of the case and why Christ allowed it and why is this particular demon possessing this person at this time and for whatever reason.

And what basically came out was, is that St. Joan of Arc was the nemesis because she actually showed up during one of the sessions. I don’t see her, but the person who’s possessed actually saw her appear, and the demon just completely freaked out and starts running straight at me. And when I’m watching him run straight at me, I’m like, he’s not coming at me, he’s trying to get away from something. She literally ran over the top of me and runs— the woman that’s possessed, but it was actually the demon— goes and goes and cowers in the corner.

And so I asked the woman, I said, what happened? After the session was over, I asked the woman what happened. She said, well, Joan of Arc appeared. That’s how terrified they are of the people in heaven.

Well, over the course of time, what came out is that the reason St. Joan of Arc was the nemesis of Satan in this particular case was because of the fact that St. Joan of Arc is the nemesis to Satan under the aspect of treason through ambition. Treason through ambition. And the reason Joan of Arc is the nemesis of him under that aspect is because she was put to death by a bishop who was French, who was siding with the English so that he could get a higher bishopric. He would advance in the church. So he commits treason in order to advance himself, and that’s what the ambition part is. That’s a description of a vast majority of the politicians in this country.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s amazing.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, you see it all over the place.

The Legion of Demons: Possession of Animals and Physical Places

TUCKER CARLSON: So I just need to ask this before I forget. So in the famous scene where Jesus casts out the demons called Legion from the man wandering the tombs on the other side of the lake. It’s in a couple of Gospels, I think. And they say, “Send us into the herd of pigs, the 1,000 pigs.” And the pigs drown themselves. They immediately commit suicide. Okay, so the two questions I have are, is it a feature of this realm that demons possess animals?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes, they can possess things. The technical term for that is infestation, which is different from possession.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: But infestation is where they basically can get into houses. I’ve had to clean up a lot of houses, buildings, that type of thing.

TUCKER CARLSON: Physical places.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, because they like things, they like places, they like possessing them. They can also get into inanimate objects. I knew a guy that actually, there’s what they call Fortuna, which is, they’re little figurines where they, they’re like their inversion of the Catholic statue type of thing or Catholic image. And so what they do is they put a curse on these particular things and then from there they can affect people.

And this priest ended up having a case where he had a whole bunch of those and put them in a bag and put them in his car. And as he’s driving down the highway, because he didn’t have a chance to burn or destroy them yet, as he’s driving down the highway, the road. He’s just— he goes over this bridge and he does not pay attention. Next thing you know, he’s underneath a tractor trailer. The car shreds every single inch of that car except for where he was sitting.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s crazy.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah. Another priest, he— there was a case where a guy had killed his wife in the backyard, and he found this— the priest found that, and the house was infested. So when he went there, he said, “Well, let’s take a look to see if I can find any remnants of this deed,” and he found this shotgun shell. So he gets the house cleaned up, but he didn’t have a chance to get rid of the shotgun shell. He said, “From the time I took possession of that shotgun shell until 48 hours later when I got rid of it, every single thing in my life went wrong.” So they can actually infest things, and then from there they actually influence things.

TUCKER CARLSON: But have you seen it with living animals?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, well, I haven’t seen them actually infest the animals to the point where the animals are doing that, but I have heard of other exorcists having that. I have seen them actually afflict animals. There was one case where the land was infested and the people who owned the farm on there lost 50 animals in the course of one year, and it was under really odd circumstances.

So one day they just came out, stepped out on the porch, and they had these Pyrenees. One of the Pyrenees was just standing. All of a sudden, the Pyrenees just starts choking to death and kills it, right? And so because the demon on the property— it took us a while to get the guy out of there, but we finally got him out. But then they took it to a vet and they said there’s no obstruction, there’s no reason, there’s no reason this dog should be dead. So they can actually do that.

Cattle Mutilation and Occult Activity

TUCKER CARLSON: What do you know about cattle mutilation, anything?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Some of the cattle mutilation, the stuff that I’ve actually studied, it’s a little bit unclear to me about what the actual motivation is of some of the people that do it, but some of it is actually a cult activity. Clearly. Yeah, and so, and part of that is it’s the— they’re still— what they’re doing is they’re inverting the sacrifice. In the Old Testament, all the sacrifices of the animals were actually just a lead-up or a type or prefigurement to Christ, right? And so what they do is they do these rituals that are like the inversion of those things in the Old Testament where they’re sacrificing animals and doing specific things in occult activity to empower themselves.

So a lot of those, I’ve heard— I haven’t, it’s not something I can verify or vouch for 100%, but I’ve talked to a lot of police officers in areas like that, and they say, yeah, there’s a satanic coven over here, there’s this, there’s witches get involved in this type of stuff too. And so they’ll say that you’ll see those kinds of things where there’s a high degree of, or high number of people involved in the occult arts.

Demons, Suicide, and the Animus to Destroy

TUCKER CARLSON: What about the connection between demonic possession and suicide? I just can’t help but notice that the second the demons enter the pigs, they kill themselves.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, they have an animus delendi, right? They want to destroy everything they get in contact with. In fact, during one session that I actually had with Beelzebub, which is another name for Satan, because to appear under Satan is one thing, but to have him possess something under the aspect of Beelzebub is another matter. But at one point I just said, basically the reason you hate everything is because whenever you see creation, you see him, isn’t it? Referring to God. And he says, yes, that’s why I want to destroy everything. So they have that.

They do drive suicide. Now, people can commit suicide on their own. Like, for example, as you probably know, there’s certain SSRIs that actually have an 80% suicidal ideation rate, right? So people can have that inclination from that, but the demons also will begin picking at the person.

So one of the things that the demons do is they try, from the very beginning of our lives, they’ll start tempting us with certain things. When they see us being born, because the knowledge of these things are infused in their mind, they actually know what our DNA is. And so they know, okay, because of this guy’s genetic disposition, he’s more likely to be inclined to these kinds of sins and not those. So they’ll start picking at the kid from a very early age, tempting him to do certain things in that area.

And their goal is not just to get them to commit sin and offend God, although that’s the primary reason, but it’s to slowly build a psychological compatibility. Because each time you give in to that, you create a set of habits in you, and you create these defects that make you much more easily intertwined with them, for sure. And so they’re actually building that.

And so what happens is a lot of times when you see with suicide— not all cases, because some cases it’s entirely natural, right? It’s a psychological issue that’s brought this about. But we’ve seen this with people who are possessed a lot of times. In fact, every person that I’ve known that’s possessed has had very strong, and sometimes they say uncontrollable inclinations to suicide. But they know that it displeases God, so they don’t.

How Does a Person Become Possessed?

TUCKER CARLSON: How does a person— well, how does a person get possessed by a demon? And then how does he know he’s possessed?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: There’s 3 ways. So the first is you commit some grave sin like abortion, murder, engaging in the occult arts is one of the principal ways that we see people becoming possessed, selling your soul to the devil, stuff like that. So you do something really bad and then that opens the door. In the Catholic sphere, we call it a mortal sin, something that’s really grave that you commit, and those sins can open you up to diabolic influence.

Now, the way it works though is because Christ has perfect power over the demons. We open the door, but to be able to step across the threshold, Christ has to give them permission. So most people who do stuff that’s really bad don’t become possessed because of the fact that Christ just doesn’t allow it because it’s not going to be good for the person ultimately, even though they’ve opened up the door. So they’ve done something really bad. That’s about 50% of our caseload, is that.

TUCKER CARLSON: And do you ask what the person—

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes, because we want to know what could be the cause of the entry. Because if we know how the demon got in, a lot of times that’s going to tell us how you’re going to get them out. And so we very often want to know that specific kind of information.

The other 50%, roughly, is something really disordered or grave has happened to you. So for example, one case that I worked on, the woman was run over by a car. Her sister ran her over with a car. About 50% of our caseload are women who have been raped, molested, psychologically or physically abused in a grave fashion. And that disorder is the domain of the diabolic, and so they can— that opens the person up to getting possessed, the woman getting possessed.

And people say, well, that doesn’t seem fair. Well, that’s true in one sense. On the other hand, Christ permits it and what you find very often is those, especially the women you find this, as they climb their way out, they become some of the most holy people you’ll ever meet because the amount of virtue they have to obtain to engage in the battle becomes pretty significant.

TUCKER CARLSON: How does a person, I mean we’re not encouraged to think that the torment we experience is the cause of demons.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Right. Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: So how does a person realize, wait, I think I have some alien being in me?

Assessing Demonic Influence: Signs and Patterns

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: It gets to causation. So if your torment is because you got a bad conscience because of the fact that you’ve been doing a lot of bad things, well, that’s probably not necessarily diabolic. So there’s natural explanations that can be for it. Sometimes too, there’s hypothyroidism. People can become depressed as a result of that. So there can be natural organic causes for that.

But the other way that you would know it is if there’s no prior causation, but you just feel afflicted. So we’ll get people who have been cursed and they said, “Yeah, it just set in one day and I was just depressed from that point on, or I was just angry all the time from that point on.”

TUCKER CARLSON: I know someone that happened to — a prominent person that happened to. Yeah.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: And so you have to look at the causation. Where did this come from? And as I mentioned, if it’s diabolic obsession, it’ll switch on and switch off. As an exorcist, we’ll pray over people like that, and you see a very distinctive pattern in this.

TUCKER CARLSON: As you’re trying to assess whether this is demonic?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes, correct. Because sometimes it’s just psychological, right? So we just—

TUCKER CARLSON: So you show up, you get the call, I or someone I love I think is possessed. You show up at the house and tell us what you do, if you don’t mind, and how you make that determination.

The Intake Process: How Exorcists Evaluate Cases

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: So usually we’ll do kind of an initial intake or interview. We actually have a vetting process because the society of priests that I’m with — we get about, it ranges from anywhere, right now it ranges anywhere from 400 to 800 requests for help a month. And so I always tell people I got pretty good job security.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: In this country you do. Yeah. But usually the way it normally works is what they call the Roman model — you’ll just sit down, you’ll talk to the individual. What you’re trying to do is get a sense of what they’re experiencing first, but then also the cause. What could have been the cause in relationship to this? Was there a psychological thing that happened to you? Were you raped when you were a kid, or did your father abuse you, or what have you? You’re looking for specific things in their past that could explain it more on a psychological level.

But then at a certain point, there’s actually a set of prayers that we’ll actually say over the person, and if it’s psychological, you won’t see much of a change. They might feel a little better when you pray over them, but that’s just because of the social interaction and someone’s actually listening to their problem, right?

Whereas if it’s diabolic obsession, all of a sudden, they’ll feel this lifting and they feel like they’re symptom-free and they’re like, “Wow, that was fantastic. I feel great.” Now, diabolic obsession is by degree, and so what can happen is if it’s really entrenched, that feel of freedom and lightness will only last for like 4 or 5 hours at the most, maybe a day at the most, and then it’ll set back in. And then you’ll pray over them again, and then you see this — you kind of get this dolphining pattern.

But they have to go — they themselves have to fight their way out. We put them under a prayer regimen and a spiritual regimen to fight their way out. And then as you pray over them, it’ll slowly lift, and then eventually they’re freed. But you’ll see these distinctive patterns, whereas if it’s psychological, it just will kind of flatline. And that’s one of the ways that we can actually know.

TUCKER CARLSON: But the high drama moments that you described at the outset where the person — when the demon is speaking to you through the person, sometimes in his voice, sometimes in the demon’s voice.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: How often does that happen?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Well, possession is very rare. So statistically, out of the 800 people or so that contact us, maybe 4 of them.

Defining the Levels: Influence, Obsession, and Possession

TUCKER CARLSON: I should have asked you to define terms. What’s the distinction between influence and possession?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: So influence is the broadest category. It’s just the genus of how they — so they can influence by temptation. Oppression is where they attack your externals, like your job situation, things like that. Obsession is where they attack your psychological faculties primarily and they obsess you. And then possession is where they actually take possession of a specific part of the body. And then from there, they’ll drive obsession and oppression.

TUCKER CARLSON: So all of us from time to time experience the first suite of—

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes, all of us are subject to what they call ordinary diabolic temptation.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, and that’s why the Lord’s Prayer says, “Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from the evil one.” Exactly.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: And then the other forms are what we call extraordinary diabolic influence, extraordinary in two reasons. One, they’re above and beyond what most people experience. But then the other part of it is that they are rare — they’re rarer, I should say.

TUCKER CARLSON: So possession — how do you know you’re confronting one of those unusual cases?

Preternatural Signs: Recognizing True Possession

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Well, there are what we call the primary and secondary signs of possession. The secondary signs are certain psychological patterns, certain patterns we’ll see in the person’s life of what’s happening. They can give us an indicator, but they don’t give us certitude.

What gives us certitude is you’ll pray over them and then you’ll see a preternatural sign. This is something that a human being is not capable of doing, like morphing, changing shape, as I mentioned before. Or superhuman strength. There was a case out in California a few years back where this 80-year-old woman who had to have a walker to get in — just to get into the sessions — they had 4 beefy police officers there during this case. And as soon as this demon manifested, he just threw them all over the room.

Or another case that a friend of mine had — it was a 10-year-old boy that had 2 police officers there that were 250 pounds each. He lifted them both off the ground at the same time with ease. So these are superhuman strength. So you’ll see those particular kinds of things.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you get unknown languages, foreign languages ever?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, so that’s one of the other ones. So speaking in languages they’ve never studied. A lot of times, psychologists for a while were saying, “Oh, well, maybe the person’s heard the language.” Well, I don’t know of anybody who can hear a language and be absolutely fluent in it. And there’s languages — like the first case of possession I ever dealt with — this guy was speaking a form of Phoenician that had been defunct for 3,500 years. So he’s never heard Phoenician. And this was fluently, by the way. So this is not a psychological issue.

Conversing with Demons in Latin

There’s other things too. In fact, it’s kind of funny. I had this one case where the demon — Christ restricts what languages they can speak with you, even though they know all the languages, he restricts them. And so in this particular case, he was restricted to speaking in Latin. So I had to converse with him in Latin. Now my Latin is decent, but once in a while, when you’re supposed to use the accusative, I use the dative. And he would just — when I didn’t do it right, he would just ignore me like he just didn’t have to put up with this, right? And so then I would correct my language.

TUCKER CARLSON: And who is the person he was occupying?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: It was actually a woman that was possessed.

TUCKER CARLSON: But not a Latin scholar?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: No, she didn’t even know Latin. So at the end of it, I commanded the demon to consider the fact that he had actually improved my grammar. He wasn’t happy with that one.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you mock them?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Not — it’s not mocking them. I just inform them of stuff that makes it painful for them, because you don’t want to mock them because that’s degrading, right? And we don’t want to be involved in the degrading process. It’s the same reason why you don’t call them names. Even in the ritual, there’s a listing of names of theirs, but you’re not going to call them like, “Hey, stupid, do this,” because they’re not stupid, right? I mean, part of that is because they’ll be happy if you do that because of the fact that that means your speech isn’t perfectly modest. And so, at least in relation—

TUCKER CARLSON: Totally right.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And so they get power.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: They get power out of it.

Demons and the Invitation to Lower Yourself

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve seen this in the human realm. Certain people are clearly under the influence of these things — they invite you to lower yourself. And invite you to mock and swear and degrade. And the second you do that, they become swollen with power.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: And I don’t know if it’s your experience, but in my experience with demons, they’re willing to take a beating to get that out of you. They’ll take the mockery — they’ll take those, you know, you’re treating them badly — if it means they’re getting power over you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I think they’re trying to incite you to become more like them.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: That’s exactly it. That’s exactly—

TUCKER CARLSON: Boy, I’ve seen that a lot. And I don’t know anything about what you’re saying. I’ve just — the parallels to the experience that anyone engaged in our political discourse has to what you’re saying are crazy.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: But in talking about that psychological compatibility, we have just a lot of people today that are psychologically compatible with a lot of demons, and that’s why we’re seeing that behavior. These people are just psychologically compatible with them.

TUCKER CARLSON: And what — can you just restate what the qualities are that you see in people that are compatible with demons, just to remember to avoid these things. What are they?

Psychological Compatibility with Demons: The Warning Signs

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Well, it’s basically people that — and this is actually some of the secondary signs of possession — it’s people who have a tendency towards mendacity, lying all the time, duplicitous. I’ve made this comment even publicly about certain politicians. You can tell that these people are in cahoots with the devil because of the fact that every single thing they do maximizes damage within their capacity to do so. You get around people that are like that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, yes. Yeah. Oh, I know them.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Even though they might have a veneer of respectability, they’re in a position of authority, and they kind of conduct themselves a certain way — everything they do — I first noticed—

TUCKER CARLSON: And they don’t show any — like a normal — I lie, I have lied, I hate lying, but I have done it. But when I do it, I think most people when they lie, you kind of twitch a little bit, you don’t want to lie.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s the people who register no concern at all about lying.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: That’s right. No remorse. That is a sign. Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think?

Occult Knowledge and Preternatural Signs

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and that’s that psychological compatibility. Or people that are willing to just sacrifice other people for the sake of them getting even some of the most modest of gains, where they’re just— so the demons will just— I mean, they’ll be happy to kill a bunch of unborn children in order to empower themselves in relationship to, you know, say one particular politician or another, they’re more than happy to do so.

The other third sign of preternatural signs— so one is things that are beyond human capacity, which I mentioned, speaking foreign languages, but the other one is occult knowledge, and that’s in two forms. So they’ll— I mentioned it earlier, we mentioned it a little bit earlier about this woman who was making theological distinctions, the demon was making theological distinctions. This is a form of knowledge that this woman didn’t have.

But the other form of occult knowledge is they can know what’s going on in the other room because as I mentioned, it’s all being infused in them as it happens, as it occurs, because that’s how they’re designed to know things. That’s how God made them to know things. He just infuses them as it happens. So they’ll actually know like what you ate for breakfast this morning, or they’ll know things about your past history.

One of the things that you’ll see from time to time is that they actually know your sinful history. And so if you go into a session and, because we see this from time to time, if one of our assistants has, that there’s some sin that they haven’t confessed, then what happens is the demon knows that. Because as far as the demon’s concerned is if you don’t confess your sins, then basically their attitude is, well, then I still have power over you because you’re still under me. It’s once you confess your sin, yeah, then it’s absolved, and then boom.

And so as a result of that, they know that. And so you’ll start the session and all the demons will point out, hey, this guy over here, he did XYZ this morning, and this person didn’t even see that guy until the session started. So they’ll have occult knowledge on those particular kinds of things. And so those are kind of the indicators that like, okay, I’m not dealing with somebody this isn’t a psychological issue, this is natural.

Now, one of the things that people often ask is, well, what about levitation? Is that a preternatural sign? Yes and no. Because there has been cases of, like, there was a saint in the Catholic Church who would actually levitate when he’d said Mass, right? And so, and he was a very saintly man. They even did exorcisms over things, maybe the guy’s possessed and nothing.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, the Pharisees accused Jesus of being possessed.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes, that’s right. That’s right. And then, but then you can also have levitation occur in an infested building, which is not too common. So people will be in bed and all of a sudden, they feel themselves getting dragged out or pulled up or lifted up off their bed and that type of thing. People have seen that. Very rare, but as exorcists, we hear about that from time to time.

And so that doesn’t necessarily mean the person’s possessed. Plus, all the people that are possessed, not everybody levitates when they’re possessed. Some do, some don’t. And so levitation is just not that common, but you see it from time to time. And so it’s not a necessary sign that the person’s possessed, but if you see a bunch of secondary signs around the person and you’re dealing with them, and then you start praying over them, and then the demon morphs or changes shape and levitates, well, then you know, okay, that’s something that’s preternatural.

Prayer, Fasting, and Casting Out Demons

TUCKER CARLSON: There’s a scene in the Gospels in Mark where a man brings his demon-possessed boy who’s hurting himself, throwing himself into fires, having seizures, and the apostles are unable to exorcise the demon. And Jesus walks up and kind of scolds them and then does so, and they say, why were you able to do it and we weren’t? And he says, because this kind of demon can only be exorcised through prayer and fasting.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: What does that mean? Well, it means that how you get a demon out of somebody varies. So Christ said, “By my name you’ll cast out demons.” What he did not say is by my name you’ll cast out all demons. And the way we know that is precisely this scene in the Gospels where they were using his name, but it wasn’t having the effect. And so they actually have to do prayer and fasting.

And basically what that means is the prayer is to petition God enough, intercessory prayer, praying to him, asking him to do enough prayers so that the person will actually be liberated. This is one of the reasons why we actually have people praying, like the assistants during the sessions and outside of sessions. We have people that will spend hours praying for the person’s liberation so that we get that done.

The other part is through fasting. Now the fasting goes back to St. Paul, where St. Paul says, “Bring your body under subjection,” right? So you have to fast in order to get your lower faculties under control to some degree, and by doing that, it’s a meritorious work which God will actually— and you can offer that so that this person will actually become liberated in the process.

The other reason, as an exorcist, so I fast 6 days a week when I’m in session. And the reason for that—

TUCKER CARLSON: What does that mean?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: It means having one moderate meal in the evening. That’s it each day. So I have nothing for breakfast, nothing for lunch, and then I have a moderate meal at night. And I do that for 6 days.

And part of that is just to— because when we become— when we get our body under subjection, two things occur. One, demons don’t want to get involved with you because if they attack you and try and suggest something to you that’s contrary to that subjection, you’re going to reject it outright. So they’re going to get defeated very easily, and you’re going to be— and by that, you’re also developing virtues. You’re empowered to be able to kick them out much more easily. When we’re weak, they can take advantage of us.

But the other part about it is, and you’ve probably noticed this even with yourself, as you start to grow in virtue and you start saying, “I gotta get this part of my life straightened out,” you become much more sensitive in that area that you’ve cleaned up. So for example, people who stop using profanity and vulgarities, all of a sudden when they hear it, it jars them, right?

Well, it’s the same thing in relationship to demons. So as you fast, if the demons attack you, you’re much more sensitive to it, and so that disorder because you’ve got it under— your body’s now rightly ordered. And so as a result, you quickly detect them, and then so they don’t want to attack you. So in addition to they don’t want to attack you, but also you have a certain amount of protection, but also you can offer that fasting up so that this person is actually liberated. The people that are possessed sometimes will also need to fast, given the nature— sometimes the nature of the demon that they’re dealing with, they need to fast in order to break the possession.

Casting Out Satan: The Unholy Trinity

TUCKER CARLSON: You said you’ve— I think you said you’ve cast out Satan himself twice?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: No, Satan once. So Satan, Lucifer, and Beelzebub are the same guy.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: And so, which Christ himself even said it, right? Because the Jews accused him of casting out Satan by the power of Beelzebub, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: And he says, how can a house divided—

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, yeah, because that’s casting out Satan. They say, yeah, how can Satan cast out Satan? So he turns and he says— or no, sorry, excuse me. They’re casting out by the power of Beelzebub, right? And he says, well, how can Satan cast out Satan? So the fathers, the patristic commentators on that scripture said that that’s an indicator that Satan and Beelzebub were the same guy. And then Lucifer was his original assigned name because Lucifer comes from lux ferre, which means to bear light. He was supposed to enlighten our minds, and that was his originally assigned task and refused to do so.

But then after that, so I actually had a case which, at a certain point during one of the sessions, demons will be compelled to say things that you’re not even asking them. God tells them, hey, you got to tell this guy X, Y, and Z, and that’s to keep the case moving along. And out of the blue, the demon just blurts out— yells, but blurts out, “I’m the mockery of the Holy Spirit.” And then he checks out. I can’t get him back to the surface. He just wouldn’t, regardless of what prayers I did.

So I’m thinking to myself, well, I know Beelzebub and Satan are the same guy. So I started asking, started praying, getting some— give me the grace to see what am I seeing here, right? And we also know that Lucifer, he was originally Lucifer. And then it dawns on me. So in, as an exorcist, we deal with cases of dissociative identity disorder, which is multiple personality. It looks like possession, but it’s actually not possession. Okay. And so it dawned on me, this guy’s— it was a trifurcated personality.

So during the next session, I referred to Beelzebub as the third personality of Satan, and he just lit up like, how did you ever figure that out? Right? Well, it was a grace, obviously. So then I basically beat out of him. So Beelzebub is the inversion of the Holy Spirit. Lucifer is the inversion of the second person of the Trinity because Christ is light from light, right, which we read in St. John’s Gospel. And then Satan is the father of lies, who’s the inversion of God the Father. So you basically have this unholy trinity.

So then I commanded him to tell me, was this trifurcation of your personality the punishment for wanting to be God? And after a little bit of beating, he said yes. And then he basically admitted he suffers the same thing that people who suffer from dissociative identity disorder, he suffers the same problem. He’s in constant pain as a result of this trifurcation.

And this actually— so I thought to myself, well, somebody had to have talked about this historically. I can’t be the first guy to kind of stumble across this. Well, lo and behold, there was a case in France in the 1600s where this exact same thing played itself out and they talked about this and then the fathers talk about it in bits and pieces. So that’s actually, we know that his personality, he was punished with this trifurcation of his personality and that would explain why exorcists would experience Beelzebub, Lucifer, and Satan in very different ways.

Satanic Ritual Abuse and Possession

TUCKER CARLSON: What about this guy invited Satan rather than one of the lesser demons?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Well, this— it wasn’t actually a guy, it was actually a woman who became possessed by Satan because she was the victim of Satanic ritual abuse. Yeah. And so, literally right off the bat in her life. So she—

TUCKER CARLSON: How common is that?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: When I first started doing exorcism work, most of the cases that we would see of that were from Satanic ritual abuse in the ’80s, which is when it really picked up steam, and then it kind of went on a bit. It kind of plateaued out a little bit, but now we’re starting to see a lot of the cases from stuff that’s been happening in the last 15 to 20 years.

So, the probably if you’re talking about cases of possession or the cases that— well, let’s just talk about the cases that come to us that have satanic ritual abuse. It’s not that many, but it’s enough that it takes up a significant amount of our time to clean these people up as a result of it.

What happened to that woman? She was liberated finally. And how did her life turn out, do you think? I think she’s a very holy woman. I think she’s a very good woman and she still has to deal with some diabolical oppression, but I think that she and her husband have really come up to speed in their spiritual lives, so they’re doing— I think they’re doing better than I think they think they’re doing, but I think she’s doing fine.

How Long Does Exorcism Take?

TUCKER CARLSON: How long does it typically take to save a person from possession?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: It depends on the degree of the possession, because possession is by degree. That is how deep the possession actually is. If you have something like satanic ritual abuse, it’s going to take a while. Generally speaking. Whereas sometimes I’ve actually had cases of possession where things have happened bad, like this one woman had— she was molested when she was younger, but she was never complicit. She didn’t want it, and she always tried to lead a good Christian life, etc. So, 3 sessions, boom, she was cleaned up.

There’s cases of children that are possessed. Those go much more rapidly. There’s usually just a few sessions. But if you’re talking about an adult, usually the average case— and this is something which even the exorcists in Rome have made this observation as well— the average timetable is 4 to 8 years.

TUCKER CARLSON: Years?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Years.

TUCKER CARLSON: Can you exorcise a demon from a person against that person’s will?

When Demons Exploit Free Will

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: No, because if the person gives— if the person actually wants the demon to be there, God respects their free will, and that empowers the demon to remain. So you can’t get anywhere.

TUCKER CARLSON: What are those persons’ lives like?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: They’re miserable.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, they’re living in hell.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, there was one— I actually had one case where the exorcist that trained me said, “Hey, there’s this one woman I can’t get to her, would you take a look at her?” And I said, “Yeah, I’ll take a look at her.” So I went in. Normally speaking, I would say a series of prayers to keep myself protected when I went in and then clean and protected on the way out. But I totally forgot to do this. And so I went in, I started talking to her, and she was possessed all right. She was showing signs of preternatural knowledge. I mean, the types of knowledge she had, it was like, wow, that’s pretty. But she liked it. She didn’t want it gone. So I told her, “Well, look, I can’t really help you in relationship to this. And so if you want to cut ties with these guys, I’m willing to help you, but until then I can’t help you.” So I left, came down with the worst case of gout I’ve ever had.

TUCKER CARLSON: Gout?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Gout. I just like—

TUCKER CARLSON: You got a medieval illness, perfect.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, exactly. So everything I did, I even took those tablets that are supposed to help you clean out the uric acid, nothing, didn’t touch it.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s the most painful.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Oh, it was just—

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve had it, it’s shocking.

The Curse That Caused Gout

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah. So it dawned on me a week later, you’d think I would clue in being an exorcist, I wonder if that woman cursed me. So I said a prayer to break the curse, and within an hour it all cleared up.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: So I called the priest that had sent her to me, and usually he’ll pick up the phone. Well, he didn’t pick up the phone. Two weeks later he calls back, “Hey, you know, I would have called you, but I got the worst case of gout I’ve ever had.” And I said, “Dude, you’ve been cursed.” And I said, “Let me guess, right toe, your big toe on the right foot?” “Yeah, yeah. How’d you know?” I said, “Well, you’ve been cursed.” So he said the prayers, boom, it lifts up.

A year later, another priest says, “Well, I think she’s had a change of heart.” I said, “Okay.” Well, this time I went in and I said some prayers, asked St. Michael to protect me.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did she apologize for cursing you?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: No. So what happens is I said some prayers to keep myself protected, but I also said a prayer which another exorcist taught me, which is extraordinarily effective, which is, “Jesus, if she tries to curse me, or if I’ve been cursed, I ask you to send the curse back from whence it came. But if that’s not your holy will, in either case, keep me protected.”

Now, there’s a reason for that, because this is why high-level witches will not get involved in cursing people as a general rule, because they know they can become subject to the very curse that they put on people. So I went in, talked to her. Oh no, she still liked the occult knowledge. She really liked knowing what her husband was up to, that kind of thing, even though he was never— not even around her. So I just gave her the same story.

TUCKER CARLSON: So she was getting knowledge that a normal person wouldn’t have?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: That’s right. She knew what her— the demons would tell her, “This is what your husband’s doing,” etc. And it was accurate, right? And that’s how you know it’s true, is that it’s actually accurate.

Well, so I left, and then about a week later I called the priest that had said, “I think she’s had a change of heart.” I said, “Well, you know, how’s she doing?” He said, “Right after you left, she ended up in the hospital, and she’s still there.”

Yeah, so the cursing is one of those things that people can become subject to it. The main thing they have to do is make sure that they’re leading an authentic Christian life and not doing anything sinful that would open the door for the demons so they become subject to the curse.

Demonic Attack Following Spiritual Growth

TUCKER CARLSON: Have you ever seen a phenomenon where someone is acted on by God, clearly inspired by the Holy Spirit, has a closer connection to God than normal, and then shortly after is attacked hard by demons?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes, yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s a common reaction?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes. Okay, so the way demons tend to function is they tend to like to go after easy prey. But because— and this is something that I learned about them— because Christ has perfect coercive power over them, which we saw in the casting out of the legion, right? And they can’t do anything without his permission, but that also means that they are subject to him, and that means that they are his instruments. And so he can use the demons as an instrument of our sanctification and purification.

So we overcome particular difficulties. And so a lot of times God will allow the person who’s leading a really good Christian life to come under attack in order to draw them even closer to him than they actually are, or to purify them, or to make them more holy, or help them to overcome a particular defect because the demon’s using that against them. And so from time to time you’ll actually see that. And so the demons— he uses them, and we call it conscription, “Hey, you got to go deal with this.” And they’ll admit it, “I didn’t want to be here, but here I am.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Huh. So the experience is designed to instruct the person who’s being afflicted by it.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: That’s right. To instruct them, to gain knowledge about how this works, but also to basically help them to grow even greater in virtue. I mean, if the demons are tempting you towards, say, lust, and you combat that, the degree of your virtue when you come out of it is going to be stronger than if it’s just natural human temptation.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s correct.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah. And so that’s a lot of times why God will allow it, so the person becomes even holier, even more virtuous than they would outside that context. The demons absolutely hate it, especially when you see in these cases of possession. And as I mentioned, some of these women will become extremely holy and I’ll just mention to the demon, “You know, you’re becoming this person’s instrument of sanctification.” They’ll admit it’s true and they hate it.

How to Protect Yourself from Demonic Influence

TUCKER CARLSON: What are steps that people can take to avoid being influenced by demons or possessed by them?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Well, the main thing to do is stop sinning, right? Especially the more serious stuff. Like, stop fornicating, stop doing all this stuff, looking at pornography, because pornography is where we’re seeing this real uptick in obsession and stuff.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really? You see this?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah. So the number of people becoming diabolically obsessed through pornography and even possessed, we’ve seen a drastic uptick in that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah. When I was first a priest, the guys that would confess pornography, you didn’t hear that too often because you had to go buy it and there was a shame involved. Well, now that it became ubiquitous on the internet, you can do it in the privacy of your home. The number of men that are confessing it is pretty high up there.

And so what we’re seeing is that, but also the fact that a lot of the pornography is cursed to increase its addictive effect. That was one of the things that the Satanists taught the people in the porn industry. Curse the master copy and then from that the copies that are made will influence the people. And so they do that, and then people become—

TUCKER CARLSON: So you believe the porn industry is controlled by Satanists?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: I don’t know if it’s controlled by it. My impression is these are just bad dudes for the most part. I think that they’re influenced by them. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t Satanists that are involved in the porn industry. I suspect there probably are, but I just think that they’re the ones who taught them, “This is what you do, and this will boost the addictive effect of it.”

And so there’s one exorcist— it wasn’t me, but there was another exorcist that I know of who’s a good friend of mine. He had a case where the guy became possessed, and finally— there’s a certain stage where the demon gets weak enough you can compel him. “How did you get in?” And he said, “Pornography.”

TUCKER CARLSON: I believe that.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: And so then after the session, he asked the guy what happened. And he said, “Yeah, it was porn.” He said, “I watched this one pornography that had this one woman on it, and then after that, something snapped or changed. And from that point on, I had to see every piece of pornography she ever made. I was just driven obsessively to find her.”

So that’s one of the ways that they get in. To answer your question, there are a few things. One is prayer and fasting. You should be praying regularly anyway as a Christian. And if you’re praying regularly, you can pray for your own protection. That’s actually one of the reasons I gave you the book Deliverance Prayers for the Laity, which is right there. That book actually contains a number of prayers that are drafted. You don’t have to use those, you can use your own, but this gives you kind of an outline or a structure. It says, “Okay, this is how this works.” So a consistent prayer life, a disciplined prayer life— you have to be very disciplined.

The second part of it is fasting, which is also true. Stop the sinning.

The Pattern of Undisciplined Interior Life

The one thing that we have found— this is something that one of my lay assistants noticed about 3 years ago— we started noticing a pattern, because this is what we watch for: patterns, because demons act in a very consistent way. And what we started noticing is the people that the demons attack, whether that’s attacking their externals through oppression or through obsession, and even in temptation in some cases, are people where there’s some area of their interior life that is undisciplined.

You know, they eat too much, or when it comes to chocolate, they’re a little too indulgent, instead of just trying to moderate those things. Not that those things are bad— it’s quite the contrary, they’re good— but they have to be moderated. Or the person just doesn’t moderate their irritation or anger in certain circumstances, things like that. So there’s some area of their life that’s undisciplined.

Sometimes it’s just that they’re not praying. You should be praying on a consistent basis every single day. I mean, if you really love God, if you really love him, you’re going to want to be with him, and that occurs through prayer. A lot of people just don’t do that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Also, if you understand the world well enough to be terrified by it, which you should be, then you will seek safety in prayer.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: I think that’s exactly it. Yeah. And also the prayer, because you’re lifting your mind and heart to God— which is one of the definitions of prayer, is lifting your mind and heart to God— it gets that right order in your own mind, and so it gives you clarity so that when you see the insanity in the world, you can still navigate it and it doesn’t affect you as much.

But it’s that undisciplined somewhere in their spiritual life that is— if people are getting attacked, you have to start figuring out, “Okay, where are you undisciplined? This is what you need to do. Get that cleaned up and it’ll stop.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Man, that is— I think whether you believe in God or not, you can see that that’s true.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Are you hopeful for the country since you seem to pay attention to the whole country, not just—

Hope, Divine Correction, and the Role of Technology

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes and no. If by hopeful, you mean in the sense that human beings are going to correct this, right this ship — I think it’s beyond human correction at this stage. It’s so bad, especially when you look at the corruption in the higher levels of government and that type of thing.

But I am also hopeful that Christ — if you look at the history of how God deals with human beings, he’ll let us be evil only for so long, and then he gives us a spanking. So I think that God is going to correct it, probably fairly soon. I mean, who knows when that is, but I think we’re getting to the point where — especially in a post-Christian era — we’re almost as bad as Sodom and Gomorrah. I mean, I tell people, look at Sodom and Gomorrah, at least they weren’t trying to marry each other, you know.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, it’s true.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah. And so I think that we’ve gotten to the point where God is going to punish us, but in a way that a good father corrects his son who’s doing bad things, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think that the first thing that jumps to mind is through war? Nuclear weapons. And I wonder about the role of technology in all of this. So you said when you started, the people with porn problems bought the porn, and that’s a small number. But thanks to technology, it’s embedded — universal porn use.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: You look at something like AI or nuclear weapons specifically. Hard not to think that that was demonically inspired.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Well, obviously these are natural things which we could discover on our own, whether the demons actually inspired people to start pursuing this. I think the real problem is the use of them.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: That’s where the real problem is. So AI — I mean, I use AI to do research. And although you have to be careful, you have to even vet that, because a lot of it’s based on the language models — what’s out there generally. A lot of times there’s garbage. But a lot of times it puts you in the ballpark so you can quickly find stuff, which is very helpful. So it’s a very powerful and useful tool. It’s a good thing, but we’ve already seen people using it for evil. And this is one of the reasons why I think that as time goes on, it’s going to become more and more evil. The types of evil we’re going to see coming from these things are going to be pretty significant, I think.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, Sam Altman’s already announced that OpenAI will allow anyone to create their own porn. Yeah, that’s it. So the cycle that you’re describing is — society falls into decadence and evil, and then it’s corrected through punishment. And you think we’re getting pretty close to the punishment stage of the cycle, if God is consistent, which he tends to be.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And that’s not a terrible thing.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: No, it’s going to be painful. It’s like the kid — when he gets spanked, it’s painful, but then he realizes, “Okay, this is not good. I’m not going to do this anymore.” And so God wants us to be able to see the effect of the evil. There’s a certain sense that that’s already happening, right? In the sense that the more evil we become, the more difficult and afflicted living in this culture is becoming. So we’re already paying the price for our sin to some degree, but we’re still on a course where we’re not correcting ourselves.

I think some people are. Some people are like, “This is just evil. I got to get my act together,” right? But that’s not the whole of the culture. But at a certain point, God’s — I think — going to have to correct it himself.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think that all the time. For every aborted child, there’s another homeless fentanyl addict or something. I mean, it all seems like — So last question, which is about drugs and alcohol and the role that demonic influence plays in it. Addiction?

Addiction, Demonic Influence, and the Role of Demons

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: So addiction is actually threefold. The first is there’s actually a brain mechanism that causes addiction. And then there’s the set of habits that revolve around that, and those are also kind of a natural thing that people can actually develop. But then there can be layered on top of that — the demons can actually drive the addiction.

So they can, through ordinary temptation, just say, “Hey, there’s the alcohol again, let’s go drink, let’s go do this, remember all this fun that you had when you did this.” And so they can actually drive that. The demons also have the ability to block our remembrance of things. And so part of the virtue of prudence is the virtue of memory — remembering the right things at the right time. So, like, “Last time I drank, I paid the price the next day.” Well, they can make you focus on the good thing you got out of it and forget all the pain you went through, right? So they can do that.

The other thing is that demons can also — because they can act upon us physically, that is in our brain and that type of thing — they can actually cause a mimicking of addictive experiences. So there was a woman that I actually knew that she would come to me, and she didn’t have the history or the habit building of an alcoholic, but she had the tendencies for it. And from time to time she would struggle in that area. So what I did is I started praying over her for any demon of obsession in relationship to the addiction. And she said every time I would pray over her, she would go about a week without any addictive feelings whatsoever.

Now I’m not suggesting that everything that’s addictive is diabolic. It’s quite the contrary. Usually people get involved in the addictions and then the demons get involved in that. But they can also drive those things in relationship to certain people.

We also see this in relationship to people who are possessed. And it’s a very common thing — sugar is a big addiction that demons drive in people who are possessed. Really? Yeah. Where they just can’t stay away from the sugar.

I had one case — this was kind of interesting. I had gotten to the point where this woman who was undergoing exorcism for possession was a very virtuous woman. I’m like, “Why am I not getting this guy out?” And so at a certain point during one of the sessions, I commanded him to come out.

TUCKER CARLSON: And she was possessed?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah, she was possessed. At a certain point, I said to the demon — I commanded the demon to tell me — “What is it you have on her?” And he just looked at me and he said, “Pop.” Meaning soda. So he checked out. I asked her, I said, “Do you have a problem with soda?” And she said, “I cannot go a day without rewarding myself with it. I just can’t do it.” And then once the possession broke, boom — they don’t even have the inclination towards it. So they can drive those kinds of things.

Now again, I’m not suggesting that everybody who has these addictions — because these things are just addictive by nature, and people develop their own — but in possession, sugar addiction.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wow, sugar addiction. I’m not surprised even a little bit. I’m just surprised you said that out loud. Because it’s so clearly true. Yeah.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Why do you think it’s true?

TUCKER CARLSON: Because I’ve just seen it and felt it, and I just know that there’s some kind of connection because it causes compulsion.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yes, exactly.

TUCKER CARLSON: And compulsion’s always a sign to me as a total layman. But like, compulsion, really? What’s that? The compulsion to harm yourself? There’s no evolutionary theory that can account for that, right?

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of times they’ll look just to see what our dispositions are — like I said before — and they’ll drive those areas, the addictions, whether it’s to a particular kind of food or whether it’s a particular kind of thing. Although with men eating a lot of meat, I get that, you know. But when it comes to other things that are very addictive, like sugars, alcohol, things like that — meat does not cause compulsion.

TUCKER CARLSON: It can’t. You can’t eat 2 pounds of beef. You can eat 2 pounds of chocolate though. Yeah, you can. That’s true. And then wait an hour, eat another 2 pounds. You can’t do that with steak.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: No, you can’t. That’s true. Although they do know that chocolate actually gives — it releases endorphins when you eat it. And it’s even more effective in women, apparently, from what I’ve read from the brain studies. But with men, they say you just show them a picture of meat and his brain lights up. Which is why I tell people, look, if a guy doesn’t like meat, there’s something wrong.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I think that’s totally fair. Father, that was amazing, and I appreciate your doing that.

FR. CHAD RIPPERGER: Thank you for having me. Thank you. Appreciate it very much.

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