During a popular video podcast in Peru, self-proclaimed visionary Erica Serrano told listeners in this predominantly Catholic country to use a consecrated host in a purification ritual and to ward off “toxic people.”According to the Catholic News Agency (CNA), Serrano encouraged this act of desecration during a podcast entitled, Women of the PM, which is hosted by several actresses.
“You have to immerse it, and put a host, holy water, the same cup, just like that. You submerge the photo of the person, you pray to that person, you go to church: It’s your sacrifice, and you ask him for the host; if he doesn't give it to you in your hand, well, you remove it [from your mouth],” Serrano said in the Dec. 27 broadcast.
“But I’m going to tell you, try to do it not on Sunday but go on Saturday because on Sunday one has to receive what it should be,” she added.
Peruvian Catholics, along with the country’s Bishops’ Conference, responded to the podcast with outrage.
Archbishop Miguel Cabrejos, president of the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference (CEC), issued a statement on January 6 in which he called Serrano’s podcast “deplorable and reprehensible” because it used the Blessed Sacrament in “superstitious rituals that contradict and relativize the experience of faith and commitment to Christian life.”
He called upon the country’s priests to defend the Eucharist and teach their flocks how to defend it from all sacrilegious acts. He went on to warn the faithful to “not be surprised by ill-intentioned people who use the sacred to promote superstitious and sacrilegious rituals, and at the same time I call on you to join together in prayer, to make reparation, to be vigilant, and to promote the love of Christ in the Eucharist."
Outrage only continued to grow after an excerpt of the video circulated on social media.
As CNA reports, Father Luis Gaspar, who holds a doctorate in canon law, warned on X that “they’re promoting sacrilege, inducing people to go to Mass, take the consecrated host in their hands [to take it home to do the ritual].”
“She even advises that if the priest gives it to you [on the tongue], then you take it out [and keep it],” Gaspar added.
He reminded the faithful that, according to the Code of Canon Law, whoever “throws away the consecrated species or, for a sacrilegious purpose, takes them away or keeps them, incurs a ‘latae sententiae’ excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See.”
Father César Valdivia, pastor of Divine Child Parish in Lima, Peru, warned in a Jan. 5 Facebook post that Serrano “invites the audience to steal the Eucharist from holy Mass to use it in this kind of witchcraft.”
“This is a grave mortal sin: using holy Communion to use it in witchcraft is a sacrilege. The Eucharist is the real presence of the body and blood of Christ. Encouraging people to go to Mass and pretend to take Communion and then bring the host to these rites is deceitful and repulsive,” he said.
“It’s true, we priests have always known that there are people who do this, wizards and witches, but always clandestinely and in secret. It’s the first time that, from what I can see, this [abuse] is encouraged in public.”
He added that “there are no good, pious, white witches or wizards compatible with the faith. … Notice how this lady even says that you have to steal the host but not on Sunday, because on Sunday you take Communion, like, a good Catholic? People get confused by that. It’s piety or goodness on a hook to believe that everything else will be fine. This is a deception.”
“Every sorcerer or witch, white, black, brown, or fuchsia, works with their witchcraft against God, whether she herself knows it or not. She induces us into a mortal sin and opens the doors to the action of the devil in our lives,” he said.
Public outcry over the podcast was so great that the producers have since removed the offensive segment from the video.
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