At the Altar of the Chair: Cardinal Simoni’s Exorcism in St. Peter’s
During a solemn Pontifical Mass at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica, a moment of startling spiritual intensity unfolded. Among the choir clergy was Ernest Cardinal Simoni, the 97-year-old Albanian confessor of the faith—tortured, imprisoned, and once condemned to death under the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha. When the final hymn faded and the organ fell silent, the old cardinal rose from his stall, made his way deliberately to the ambo, and began to recite aloud the long form of the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel—specifically, the form prescribed for exorcism.¹
Witnessing this unexpected act, Fr. Z, who was seated directly behind him, recorded the event with characteristic succinctness: “Card. Simoni went straight at the devil.”²
The Confessor Who Would Not Bend
Born on 18 October 1928 in Troshani, northern Albania, Ernest Simoni entered the Franciscan minor seminary at ten years old. When the Communist revolution erupted, the friary was dissolved, the brothers shot or exiled, and the seminarians expelled. Simoni completed his theological studies secretly and was ordained a priest in 1956.³
Only seven years later, after offering Christmas Eve Mass in 1963, he was arrested by the secret police for treason—his “crime” being that he had celebrated a Mass for the repose of President John F. Kennedy’s soul.⁴ He was sentenced to death, later commuted to 25 years of forced labour, and spent nearly three decades working in quarries, mines, and sewers. He offered Mass in secret using a drop of wine and a crumb of bread, and he heard confessions whispered in darkness. On the cell wall of his prison was scratched his only declaration of comfort: *“My life is Jesus.”*⁵
Released in 1981 but still under surveillance, he continued to minister covertly until Albania’s religious freedom was restored in 1990. Pope Francis wept upon hearing his story during his visit to Albania in 2014, calling him a “living martyr.”⁶ Two years later, he made him Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria della Scala, waiving episcopal consecration because of his age.⁷
The Exorcism in St. Peter’s
The Pontifical Mass drew clergy, seminarians, and laity from around the world. Yet the event’s most enduring moment came not from the ceremonial splendour but from the quiet courage of a single priest. Rising from the choir stalls, the near-centenarian cardinal advanced to the ambo and began, in strong Latin, “Sancte Michaël Archángele, defénde nos in proélio…” Many of the faithful knelt. Others wept. It was not a polite recital but the public act of an exorcist who had faced the powers of hell before.
Fr. Z later observed that it would have been even better “had it been done before Mass—and by every priest in the place.” His remark reflected a widespread conviction among traditional Catholics: that the Church must recover the language and practice of spiritual combat, long neglected in an age of bureaucratic faith and sentimental diplomacy.⁸
Too Little, Too Late?
One cannot help but ask: did this moment come too little, too late? The Church stands at a crossroads. On one hand, Cardinal Simoni’s act is a beacon of hope—a reminder that even at the heart of Christendom the battle against evil continues. On the other, the fact that such an act was unexpected, unscheduled, and isolated raises a question of ecclesial urgency. If even in St. Peter’s such a prayer is the exception, what does that say about the normal state of our liturgical and spiritual life? We must hope it is not too late—but we must also confront the possibility that without wider reform, even courageous gestures may remain isolated and historic, not normative.
The Real Test: Faith Over Form
It was remarked that only two of the five “Dubia Cardinals”—those prelates who in 2023 submitted formal questions regarding enduring doctrinal concerns to the Pope—remain alive and were present in the basilica.⁹ This fact carries symbolic weight. The external forms of liturgy—the solemn Pontifical Mass, the ancient prayers, the venerable cardinal in the choir—serve a purpose. Yet the real test for the Church, echoing the words of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, is not the external rite of the Traditional Latin Mass alone, but whether the perennial Catholic faith is once more openly taught and believed by the hierarchy and lived by the faithful.
To celebrate the TLM while neglecting the deposit of faith is to adorn the altar while abandoning the Gospel. The Church’s mission is not to recycle liturgical forms but to transmit Christ Himself. The presence of Cardinal Simoni reciting the exorcism in the very heart of Rome gives us hope. Yet the absence of radial change elsewhere—among many bishops, priests, theologians—offers solemn cause for vigilance.
A Prophetic Gesture
That an old priest who survived one of history’s most militantly atheistic regimes should stand in the world’s most magnificent church and invoke the Archangel’s aid was a vision of the Church Militant restored. The same man who endured dungeons and mines for the Faith now faced a subtler evil—spiritual corruption and loss of faith—within the heart of Rome itself.
Fr. Z’s comment that “the Basilica itself has needed rites of exorcism for a long time” resonated deeply with many who sense that the visible Church has become afflicted by compromise and confusion, its supernatural mission obscured by the language of diplomacy.
The Meaning of the Prayer
Pope Leo XIII composed the St Michael Prayer after a vision in which he saw Satan demanding permission to tempt the Church for a century.¹⁰ Its daily recitation after Low Mass was abolished following the Council, a suppression seen by many as emblematic of the post-Conciliar retreat from spiritual militancy. That Cardinal Simoni—a priest forged in the furnace of persecution—should revive it unbidden at the very centre of Christendom carried unmistakable symbolic weight.
Here, in one spontaneous act, the “living martyr of Albania” reasserted the perennial truth that the Church’s first struggle is not political but spiritual, that the world’s redemption begins with her sanctification, and that the devil remains real, active, and vanquished only by grace.
In the heart of St. Peter’s, the voice of a nearly hundred-year-old confessor declared again: “Who is like unto God?”
¹ Roman Rituale, Tit. XI, cap. III (Exorcismus in Satanam et angeles apostaticos).
² John Zuhlsdorf, “In San Pietro: Card. Simoni went straight at the devil,” Fr. Z’s Blog, 26 Oct 2025.
³ Press Office of the Holy See, “Biographical Notes: Cardinal Ernest Simoni,” press.vatican.va.
⁴ “Cardinal Ernest Simoni, the Living Martyr of Albania,” National Catholic Register, 21 Nov 2016.
⁵ Aleteia, “Pope pays tribute to living martyr of communism,” 16 Feb 2024.
⁶ Pope Francis, Apostolic Visit to Albania, Meeting with Priests, Religious and Movements, Tirana, 21 Sept 2014.
⁷ Consistory for the Creation of New Cardinals, 19 Nov 2016; Vatican Press Bulletin.
⁸ John Zuhlsdorf, ibid.
⁹ “Cardinals Send ‘Dubia’ to Pope Francis Ahead of Synod on Synodality,” National Catholic Register, 2 Oct 2023 — The five cardinals being: Brandmüller, Burke, Zen, Sandoval Íñiguez, Sarah.
¹⁰ Pope Leo XIII, Letter to the Bishops of the World, 25 Sept 1888; Acta Sanctae Sedis 21 (1888), 747-749.
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