A black mass held on the steps of the Kansas State Capitol on Friday morning descended into chaos with the leader of the Satanic Grotto and a Christian protestor both arrested by police.
According to Catholic Vote, the leader of the Satanic Grotto, Michael Stewart, held the black mass on the eastern steps outside the Capitol building on the morning of March 28. Several hundred counter-protestors were also gathered to pray and denounce the sacrilegious ritual.
At one point in the ritual, Stewart held up what looked like a communion host and read a series of blasphemous invocations against Jesus Christ before tossing it to the ground and stomping on it. When a counter-protestor saw this, he broke through the barriers and snatched the host, then fell to the ground to protect it. Stewart proceeded to punch the protestor, then sat on the steps shouting “Hail Satan!” as police detained the man.
As Stewart later told the Kansas Reflector, “He was trying to tackle me to get to the cracker underneath. I was able to kind of fend him off. I do think he may have picked up the crumbled cracker and ate it. Did I get physical with him? Yes.”
Later, Stewart went inside the Capital building which he intended to dedicate to Satan even though Kansas governor Laura Kelly explicitly warned that no protests were permitted inside the building. When security confronted him at the door, he claimed he was coming inside as a private citizen and had no intention of performing a ritual.
However, a reporter for WIBW reports that he then walked into the rotunda “where he held his arms skyward and made a dedication to Satan.”
While attempting to read the “prayer” of dedication, a protestor named Marcus Schroeder tried to rip the paper out of Stewart’s hand. Stewart responded by punching Schroeder in the face and had to be tackled to the floor by law enforcement who promptly arrested him and took him into custody.
Schroeder was also arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct.
Several of Stewart’s followers attempted to continue the service but were also escorted away.
As for whether or not Stewart was using a consecrated host, evidence points to the contrary.
The Catholic Register reports that even though Stewart boasted about having secured a consecrated host and wine for the ritual, he later walked back those claims in court after Archbishop Joseph Naumann sued for the return of the sacred species which are the property of the Church.
“The case was dismissed March 20 following a hearing where Stewart and fellow defendant Travis L. Roberts, the Satanic Grotto’s vice president, admitted under oath they did not have the sacred species,” the Register reports.
Republican Kansas Rep. Angela Stiens was present in the Capitol in protest of the ritual and told Catholic Vote that she had been told the hosts used were purchased online.
“They [the Satanists] handed out 150 ‘mass kits,’ as I was told – they call them ‘mass kits,’” Stiens said. “I don’t know what those kits included, but they said that [they] were calling them ‘wafers.’ So I don’t know what that means. . .I was told they bought some unconsecrated hosts off of Amazon.”
Although she did not actually see one of the kits, “…[T]hey were here today to mock our Catholic faith,” she said. “There was no mistake about that.”
Former Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp, who served in the Kansas Senate before being elected to Congress, consulted with an exorcist about whether or not he should participate in a TV interview with Stewart.
“Father had a simple question: ‘Why would you do this? What do you hope to gain?’” Huelskamp told the Reflector. “I stumbled around in my answer. I wanted to share the truth about Christ. The truth about the Eucharist. His summary response was quite stunning to me. He said, ‘There is no good that could come from being in the same room with a satanist.’”
The exorcist suggested that such an interview could advance the interests of Satan. Huelskamp ultimately cancelled the interview.
Francis Slobodnik, a Topeka representative of the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, praised the faithful who showed up to protest the event, and the 95,000 people who signed a petition to the Governor to prohibit the event from taking place in the Capitol.
“TFP founder Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira often reminded us that the devil’s head was made to be crushed by Our Lady,” Slobodnik said. “ That is exactly what happened today. The devil reared his ugly head in Kansas, and faithful Catholics immediately crushed it. This must happen all over America. Every time Satanism appears in public, Catholics must stand up for God’s rights.”
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