Exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger: Possessed Politicians, Occult Activity, and Speaking to Satan Himself | Tucker Carlson Transcript

Catholic exorcist Father Chad Ripperger discusses demonic possession, spiritual warfare, and the diabolic roots of modern social problems

Tucker Carlson interviews Father Chad Ripperger, a Catholic priest and founder of a society dedicated exclusively to exorcism work.

Summary

Tucker Carlson interviews Father Chad Ripperger, a Catholic exorcist with 18 years of experience who founded a society of priests devoted exclusively to exorcism. Father Ripperger argues that 23% of the Gospels concern Christ dealing with demons, making exorcism central to Christianity rather than a fringe practice — a fact he says modern Western Christianity has largely abandoned due to the influence of psychology and atheist academics. He describes demons as fallen angels with infused knowledge of all creation, regulated by natural law and entirely subject to Christ's authority, and explains the hierarchy of demonic influence from ordinary temptation through to full possession. He connects specific named demons — including Baal, Asmodeus, Leviathan, and Baphomet — to specific social phenomena including pornography addiction, homosexuality, and abortion, arguing that legal and cultural changes in America have ceded territory to these entities. He also recounts the only case he has encountered of Satan himself as the possessor, revealing what he describes as Satan's tripartite personality as punishment for seeking to be God.

Key Takeaways

FULL TRANSCRIPT

The centrality of exorcism in the Gospels

Tucker Carlson: Father, thank you so much for doing this. As a Protestant who grew up in Georgetown — in part where The Exorcist was filmed — I've been trained from birth to think of exorcism as something kooky that the Latin church does for weird cultic reasons, not at all mainstream Christianity. And then you go and read the New Testament.

Father Chad Ripperger: That's right. And you realize that the first miracle that Jesus performs in the Gospel of Mark is casting out demons. And then he repeats that continuously and commissions the apostles to do the same. Casting out demons is not just some random thing. It is central to the Gospels.

Tucker Carlson: That's right. 23% of the Gospels are actually about Christ dealing with demons. And this is why, when Christians —

Father Chad Ripperger: That's unbelievable. How did I not know that?

Tucker Carlson: Yeah. Well, a lot of Christians will just say, "I believe in God, but I don't necessarily believe in the devil." And they're like, "Well, do you believe in scripture?" "Yeah." "Well, then how can you not believe that one of the primary missions of Christ was to save us from them?" When he sends the disciples out, it's preach the good news and cast out demons.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes. That's right.

Tucker Carlson: That's the mission. So, just before we get into what you've spent the last decades doing — casting out demons — how is it that the modern church, at least in the United States, at least the Protestant churches, have so deemphasized this to the point where it's disappeared?

Father Chad Ripperger: I think there's a historical reason behind that. And it's not just here in the United States — it's actually in the West in general, the Christian West specifically. It had to do with the advent of psychology. When psychology came on board, it became in vogue, especially in the 50s and 60s, to think that all these people's problems were just purely psychological. There are psychological issues that very much look like possession, but the fact is they just started chalking it all up to that. That's one of the reasons why in the United States, before the 1960s, the number of dioceses that had an exorcist was fairly high — every major diocese would have one. But then it started to decline precisely based upon that thinking. Over the course of time, they began to realize there are certain things we're seeing that are not psychological and can't be explained that way. People needed the help, and so now the bishops are coming a little bit more up to speed in that regard.

Tucker Carlson: Well, after 100 years of Freud, we still can't identify what schizophrenia is. It does make you realize there are things we don't understand that could very well be supernatural. That does make you wonder about the origins of psychology, though. If the net effect was to eliminate people's belief in something real — which is demonic possession — then —

Father Chad Ripperger: I think that was only one aspect of it. I think the real goal of a lot of the psychologists — which is in the literature — is that many of them are atheists. They just didn't believe in God, and so they wanted to eliminate any concept of anything supernatural, or what we call preternatural. Demons are preternatural, not supernatural. God is the one that's supernatural. But we tend to talk that way, although sometimes people will say "supernatural" thinking about demons too.

The distinction between preternatural and supernatural

Tucker Carlson: Can you, for the ignorant like me, explain the difference between preternatural and supernatural?

Father Chad Ripperger: Supernatural refers to those things which are above anything that is created — that pertains to God. Whereas preternatural comes from the Latin praeter naturam, which means "aside from nature." That would be things that are above what we experience as human beings in this world, but it's not supernatural because it's not God. It's kind of an in-between state, which is what the demons are. But they're still considered natural in the sense that they have a specific nature that God created them with. They're created beings and they actually have a natural law. They're structured to think in certain patterns and certain ways. So it's a middle tier — preternatural. Supernatural would be something like being able to suspend the laws of nature. Demons can't cause miracles, for example, but they can cause things that to us as human beings are outside our normal experience. So it looks miraculous, but it's actually not. It's something they can do on their own.

Tucker Carlson: So I guess the good news about that distinction is they're not all-powerful.

Father Chad Ripperger: No, they are not. In fact, demons are one of the most regulated things in the universe, really. They're regulated by three things. One, as I mentioned, their natural law — their nature. They're structured a specific way. The second thing is that 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 they chose — the sin that they committed. Their tendency is fixed towards that. But the main thing is — if you remember in the Gospels, Christ says to the apostles before he sends them out, "All power was given to me in heaven and earth." All power. That means that demons know they can't do anything without Christ's permission.

In the spiritual warfare landscape, that actually brings me a lot of confidence as an exorcist. I don't have to worry about if it turns into the type of thing where I get knocked around a little during a session — I know Christ is still controlling and metering how much they can and cannot do. We know this too because, as you mentioned, 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.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes. They can't even enter into the pigs without his permission. So nothing they do can occur without his permission. Christ has complete control over the spiritual landscape, the spiritual battle. He has complete control over it. And they know what they can and cannot do.

The first time that really occurred to me was a case where a demon was possessing a woman's lower back — because when they take possession, unless it's a perfect possession, they take possession of a part of the body and from there they can affect the rest of the person. I commanded him to tell me why he was possessing that part. He said, "I don't know." I commanded him to explain what he meant. He said, "When I entered, Christ restricted me to this part of the body." 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. He regulates all of it ultimately. And then you begin to realize over the course of time that it's ultimately for our spiritual benefit. The experience is for our spiritual benefit.

What demons are and where they come from

Tucker Carlson: I believe that. So what are demons, if you don't mind — we can just start at the beginning, big picture.

Father Chad Ripperger: According to Dionysius and then also Thomas Aquinas, and pretty much the whole theological tradition from that time on, basically in the very beginning when God created, what he did is he created the entire hierarchy of angels instantaneously, all at once. All the angels were created, and Thomas Aquinas talks about what they call the three instances of the angels.

When they were first created, how they understand things is the opposite of ours. When we want to know something, we'll actually study a number of different individual things so we can get a general sense, and from that we'll abstract a conceptual understanding of what their nature actually is. That's because we use our senses to come to know things. With the angels and also the demons, it's the exact opposite. All their knowledge was infused. They know exactly what the essence and nature of every created thing that exists is.

This is actually a diagnostic you can use in session, because we get people who try to fake that they're possessed. If you ask a human being a technical theological or philosophical question, you can see they have to think about it and reason their way through it. That's not how demons work. They'll immediately give you the answer — just immediate. They don't have to think because all their knowledge is infused.

Tucker Carlson: Have you ever seen demons answer esoteric questions?

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes. I've had cases — I'm actually working on one right now — where the demons have made theological distinctions there's no way the person could have ever known. Let me give you an example. He made the distinction between consummatum and finitum, which is a Latin phrase. Consummatum — the sacrifice is complete. In relationship to the sacrifice of Christ, he says consummatum and then gives up his spirit. It's completed — everything necessary for our full redemption and healing. 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. He made that distinction. And this is one of those indicators — 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 —

Father Chad Ripperger: Nothing. She finished high school and that's about it.

There's other times when they've made distinctions that are just remarkable. In the Catholic tradition, we believe Our Lady was assumed into heaven because she was so pure and sinless that God assumed her body into heaven. It was the feast of that day and I was doing a series of exorcisms. I asked the demon — or commanded him — to tell me about this being her moment of greatest glory. He just looked at me flatly and said, "No, that's not how that works." I said, "What was it then?" He said, "It was her moment of great triumph. She had gone through life without committing sin and now she's entering into heaven triumphant." I said, "Was it the crowning of her as queen of heaven and earth?" — because we believe that as Catholics. He said, "No, that was her moment of greatest honor." That makes sense, because honor is praise or recognition for excellence, and God was recognizing her excellence in this way. I finally commanded him to tell me what the greatest moment was. He said, "Standing under the cross in perfect virtue." Later he revealed that other than the actual passion and death of Jesus Christ, it was the most glorious event in all of history.

The demon said that.

How demons manifest: morphing, voices, and preternatural signs

Tucker Carlson: I'm assuming that the demon is speaking through the voice of the person he possesses.

Father Chad Ripperger: Sometimes they speak through the person's own voice. There are other times where they'll assume the characteristics of a voice that is proper to their nature. Thomas Aquinas makes the observation that one of the ways they manifest — we call it morphing — is that the person will actually change shape. Their face will change and take on the characteristics that are proper to the demon's personality.

Tucker Carlson: You've seen people's faces change.

Father Chad Ripperger: Morphing is about 90% of what you see.

Tucker Carlson: What are the changes like?

Father Chad Ripperger: It's very subtle all the way to extreme. Just recently I prayed over a rather prominent individual. When I looked at him after the prayers, it can be something very subtle — what the writers and authors call the cherrywood look, where they take on this face that turns a cherrywood color that's impossible for us as human beings to have or replicate on a natural level.

Tucker Carlson: Cherrywood.

Father Chad Ripperger: It's kind of a red-brown color that you're just 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. In a couple of cases I've had, women who were very feminine-looking all of a sudden morphed into looking completely like a man.

Tucker Carlson: While you're sitting there.

Father Chad Ripperger: While you're praying, usually, is when it actually ends up happening. And you look down and the woman you're praying over is now a man. 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'll very often see the same thing.

Tucker Carlson: Have you seen people's pupils change?

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes, that's pretty common. A lot of times they'll hyperdilate and turn very black. Another more common thing is their eyes will roll all the way into the back of their head so all you see is white. Those are the kinds of things you actually see. But morphing is one of what we call the preternatural signs that you know someone's possessed.

Tucker Carlson: How do their voices change?

Father Chad Ripperger: There are two things that change. A lot of times they'll change just in tone — they'll start sounding like a man sometimes. 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 the characteristics of their own voice. An experienced exorcist — it's like a boxer. When you get in the ring, you can watch all sorts of videos about a guy's technique, but it's not until you actually box with him that you get a sense of what he's really like. The reason demons don't want to attack you, especially if you're an experienced exorcist, is based on a philosophical principle: the cause is always somehow in the effect. So anytime they attack you, they reveal something about themselves in that process, and you can use it against them later. As an experienced exorcist, they really don't want to get involved with you. Although a lot of times Christ still requires them to, they don't want to attack you because once they do, you can find out what their psychology is, what their patterns of thinking are.

Tucker Carlson: How do they attack you?

Father Chad Ripperger: One is oppression, where they attack you from the outside. The other is where they affect your imagination and your emotions. They have the ability to do that. A lot of times what they'll do is put a perspective on an image in your imagination. For example, a guy when he's first married 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. Then after ten years, his perspective on her changes because they've had fights and things of that sort. When he sees her, even though she hasn't changed, his perspective has, and so his emotional response changes. Demons can put that perspective on your imagination. This is one of the ways they can affect relationships. In fact, the first thing they ever do in a marriage is try to put a perspective on one or both of the spouses to psychologically divide them — the person thinks they see something bad in the other spouse when it's actually not there.

What they'll do when they attack the exorcist is put that perspective on your imagination. But that perspective then tells me something about their psychology. I've written three or four books on psychology from the way St. Thomas Aquinas understands it, incorporating a lot of modern psychology but giving it a foundation based on an authentic anthropology. When I first started as an exorcist, I just started watching the psychological patterns of demons, because I figured they have a natural law — each demon has its own natural law, inclined to specific things and not others. As human beings, we have a natural law because we're inclined toward things like marriage, eating, living in community. Demons have that same thing except theirs is tailored to their specific nature, because each demon's nature is different — their species, technically speaking, is different. That's why in a session, when one demon comes to the fore and the other one leaves, the morphing will change to accommodate that. You immediately know, okay, I'm dealing with this one rather than that one. And after you've dealt with the same demon over and over again, you can start a new case and once he manifests, you recognize who he is.

Tucker Carlson: You'll see the same demon in different people.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes.

Tucker Carlson: How many — I have so many questions. I hope you're prepared for a long interview. This brings us back to my initial question: what are they and where are they from?

The nature and fall of the angels

Father Chad Ripperger: 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. They only have two faculties: an intellect and a will. They don't have emotions, but they experience emotions in their will.

When they were first created, the entire hierarchy of angels — and they're in the billions, because it's part of the theological tradition that every human being has their own guardian angel, and that's just from the lowest rank of one of the nine choirs — they were all created instantaneously at once. They were created into a perfect state of knowing, because as I mentioned, they just have to use their will to move their mind to think about something and they immediately exhaust everything they can possibly know about that thing to the degree of their intelligence. That's why when you ask them questions they never think about it — they just give you the answer immediately.

So in that first instance they were created in an act of knowing. That meant they knew who God was, who they were, what their nature was, what he was asking of them as an assigned task. God created every single angel to perform a specific task. Gabriel, for example, was created with the task of doing the Annunciation to Our Lady. St. Michael's originally assigned task, according to the theological tradition, is that he's 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 refused to accept Christ, he became the guardian angel of the elect of the Christian religion. That's also why we read in scripture in the Book of Revelation that St. 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.

So they're all given an assigned task. They know all these things. 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, 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?

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, they're going to be damned if they don't. Even under duress in session, you can compel the demons and they'll admit it: their first sin, even though it was usually pride or envy of some sort, was that they failed to sacrifice that thing they wanted. They literally wanted something that God had not intended for them. Thomas Aquinas makes the observation that in the end, there's one thing that God wants from every intelligent creature: sacrificing his will to God. So they had to accept their task, which was below this perfection they desired. They had to accept this lower assignment.

Then they made their choice. And unlike us — Tucker, as a general rule, human beings are pretty stupid.

Tucker Carlson: Yeah. Exactly. That's why God has mercy on us, right?

Father Chad Ripperger: Exactly. Because we just 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 had even given them the grace to accept their task, but they absolutely refused. The third of the angels that fell — we know that from the Book of Revelation, where it talks about how the dragon swept a third of the stars down. The fathers of the church say that was an indicator that a third of the angels fell and became demons as a result.

So the demons are actually fallen angels whose will is now fixed. Once they make their choice, it's all in. They're either going to accept God's will or they're not. And then right after that, if they refuse to accept their task, they're damned immediately. They immediately experience what we call in Catholic theology the pain of loss. They immediately experience: I'm never going to see God. 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. Of those who were faithful, they immediately got to see God. And then we read from scripture there was a battle that ensues — a battle of the wills in heaven, because that's all they have: intellect and will. They battle through their wills. But then at a certain point God said that's enough, and he sends St. Michael to cast them down.

So the long-winded way of saying it is that demons are fallen angels who are now bent on malice and evil.

What demons work against: truth, beauty, and goodness

Tucker Carlson: Bent on malice and evil. I have my own theories about what that looks like. Let me just list a few. Violence. Chaos. Division among people. The destruction of beauty.

Father Chad Ripperger: That's correct.

Tucker Carlson: Those are the obvious ones I notice all around me. Are there others? And is that correct?

Father Chad Ripperger: Yeah, that's correct. Under those you would see — we sometimes say the true, the good, and the beautiful is what they work against. Truth is the obvious one. They'll mitigate against that, and that's part of putting those perspectives on you so that you don't judge the reality of the situation, the truth of what it really is. The historic definition of truth is the adequation of intellect to thing — that my mind conforms to the way the thing is in reality. We know this intuitively: if somebody tells you this wall is purple and you look at it and it's brown, you're like, no, it's not. You know their mind isn't in congruity with reality. What they do is try to jade your perspective on the reality of the situation, and that's how they cause damage among human beings, in relationships, in marriage — which is one of the things majorly under attack. They're doing a lot to marriages right now.

But basically their goal is to get us to commit sin and place ourselves in a position where we're damned as a result of what we do.

Tucker Carlson: Are there cycles in the behavior of demons? You said recently we're seeing a lot of attacks on marriages.

Father Chad Ripperger: There is, in the sense that as I mentioned, the natures of things are infused in them, but also every individual thing that's happening throughout the universe is infused in their mind as it happens. If they want to know what's going on in Saturn, they just think of Saturn and they see what's going on there. It's the same with us. If they want to know what we're talking about, all they have to do is think about the concept of humanity, look inside of that, see us as individuals, and they can see what we're actually talking about. That's their mode of knowing. 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 on the most likely thing based upon what you said — they're not in error about what you said, they may just not know what your intention is.

The point is that they 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: And it's so obvious. I didn't even — I still don't understand most of this, but just watching the intent of almost everything. Well, say the US government does — it's aimed at Jesus.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yeah. Or even the mainstream news media. A lot of times you can talk about anything about 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, believe anything, do anything you want, but whatever you do, don't be Christian.

Tucker Carlson: Yeah. And especially don't use the J word except as an epithet.

Father Chad Ripperger: Exactly.

The five demonic generals and America's spiritual territory

Tucker Carlson: Do you think the United States specifically is under greater demonic attack than it has been?

Father Chad Ripperger: Historically, yes. I usually tell people this particular aspect of it. Under Satan, this has been the common experience of exorcists for centuries — there are five demons, called by different names like the council or the generals, whose job is to execute the plans of Satan in this life.

The first one is Baal, who is the spirit of fornication, the spirit of impurity. When the United States struck down the anti-fornication laws and then allowed pornography under freedom of expression, they ceded the territory to Baal. And after Baal, as St. Paul says, if people give into lust, eventually men start sleeping with men and women start sleeping with women.

So the next one is Asmodeus, which is a demon of impurity, but specifically the demon of homosexuality in men. In cases of possession, if you have a man who has had homosexual experience, it's a pretty good bet that Asmodeus is one of the possessors.

Tucker Carlson: Do you call him by name?

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes. At a certain point, in fact, the ritual that the church has us do tells you to ask the names. 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. You can actually go and read — there's mention in scripture. You can also study, for example, the demon Isis — you can actually study the history of the Isis cult and you'll understand certain aspects of his personality because he engendered it. One of the more recent ones I had was the demon Loki, who is a demon of mischief. Once I got the name out of him, I went and researched Loki. This demon was a spitting image of the mythology behind this figure. Getting him under control was very difficult.

Tucker Carlson: What does mischief mean in this context?

Father Chad Ripperger: He was just constantly trying to create havoc. He's a bit of a jokester, doesn't want to obey commands, just doesn't want to do what he's supposed to do. Very difficult to get him to be compliant.

Tucker Carlson: And what were the problems that the person possessed by this demon was experiencing?

Father Chad Ripperger: Excessive religiosity.

Tucker Carlson: Really? What does that mean?

Father Chad Ripperger: Doing things that are actually spiritually harmful under the guise of religion. Like fasting excessively, or praying to the point where you're neglecting your duties of state in life. Christ expects that as a father, you're taking care of your kids.

Tucker Carlson: Well, this is something Jesus lectured the Pharisees about — you're ignoring your parents because you said this wealth goes to God.

Father Chad Ripperger: That's exactly right. And it's the same thing. You'll get married women who spend all their time at church and are neglecting their family at home. The demons can foster that type of thinking through temptation — I'm doing a good thing because look, I'm at church. You get it?

Named demons and their domains

Father Chad Ripperger: When Asmodeus is cast out, do the impulses leave?

Tucker Carlson: Yeah. It's kind of interesting that you asked that. I actually had a case that had the noonday devil — mentioned in Psalm 91 — as a possessor. Once I found out who he was, I went and researched him in the fathers. He's actually the demon of the midlife crisis, according to 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. He's also the demon of acedia, or spiritual sloth.

Once I found out who he was, during one of the sessions — after sessions I'll often talk to the people who are possessed and ask what they experienced, because a lot of times the demon will communicate to the person things the exorcist won't see or hear — this man said, "The noonday devil kept crying out to Asmodeus." This was a guy who was married to a beautiful young wife with two children. I said, "Do you have homosexual ideation?" And he said, "Yeah, and I don't know where it's coming from." He didn't have the trauma normally associated with that, didn't have the psychological history. So I did a prayer to sever the connection between the noonday devil and Asmodeus, and from that point on he never had the ideation again.

Now I'm not suggesting that all homosexuality is diabolic — people can become homosexual through psychological processes, 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 get a thought about something like that. Well, that's not your thought — that's usually something diabolic.

The difficulty we're having in our culture is that we're forming perverts. We keep putting stuff on the news media and YouTube where we're making these associations, and over the course of time people's minds become formed by that and they become perverted in the process — where they automatically presume if a guy's unmarried, he's got to be gay. We're making those associations.

In women, there are two demons of homosexuality. The first is Lilith, who is associated with the more passive, feminine kind of homosexual women — women that you look at and think, you seem like a pretty decent-looking woman, why don't you just go get a guy? Very passive, more seductive. The other one is Leviathan, the demon of homosexuality in women of the more aggressive kind. My nickname for him is the women who are heavy on the heels. These are the more masculine women. You'll see that phenomenon actually happen.

Then I tell people, when they allowed gay marriage, they ceded our country to that tier of diabolic influence. And then the last one — 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. Baphomet is the demon of child sacrifice and abortion. When they allowed abortion in this country, those five generals now basically have a gainsay over our country. Their influence is extremely powerful. We know this just by virtue of the fact that trying to get rid of abortion is like extracting teeth without novocaine. It's so brutally difficult to get done. That's because the demons empower the people that are keeping it in place — the demons love abortion.

Tucker Carlson: It's interesting that child sacrifice seems to be a feature of most religions historically around the world. There's almost no region in the world where we haven't found evidence of human sacrifice, child sacrifice.

Father Chad Ripperger: That's right.

Tucker Carlson: So clearly there's something real there. The Incas and some central African tribe didn't come up with this because they were talking to each other on the internet.

Father Chad Ripperger: That's right.

Tucker Carlson: There's something organic and real about it. What is that?

Father Chad Ripperger: I think it's the tendency of demons towards those specific things. But do the people who participate in child sacrifice — whether it's abortion or voodoo or muti in Africa — do they receive power from demons?

Some of them do actually, but usually in order for them to receive power from it, they become subject to the demons as a result of engaging that behavior. 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. And it's exploding. But does it work in the short term? The trade is — in Haiti, in Africa, here in Santería — the trade is I pledge allegiance to a demon and in exchange I receive power and wealth. Does that work?

Father Chad Ripperger: The technical term for that is a pact. You enter into a pact with a demon. Now a pact is a form of contract, and there are certain aspects of a contract. One of them is there has to be a guarantee that you can fulfill the terms of the contract. If you enter into a contract for some guy to mow your lawn, but he doesn't even own a lawn mower and he's never going to bother buying one, he can't fulfill the terms of the contract. The problem with the demons is that 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 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. I've had more than one case of possession where they entered into a pact with the devil and the devil couldn't give them anything, but the person ended up possessed as a result of entering into that pact.

Fortunately, these people climbed out of it because they actually sought help and did what they needed to do to become liberated from the diabolic influence. But a lot of people just become destroyed.

There are times, however, when God will allow the demons to fulfill the terms of the contract. What most people think is that the demon is doing what they're asking. But what they don't realize is that 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 subjection.

Tucker Carlson: They're accruing debt.

Father Chad Ripperger: Exactly.

How Father Ripperger became an exorcist

Tucker Carlson: How did you get into this?

Father Chad Ripperger: I was minding my own business. I'm an academic — 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. Naively I just told the Archdiocese, "We'll get one," thinking just find some priest. At that time there were only 13 exorcists in the country and about five knew what they were doing. So there were very few. 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. 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. If you saw the movie Nefarious, that's that interchange between the human and the diabolic psychology that you saw.

Anyway, they asked me to do the case. 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. I did, and boom, he immediately manifested. That was an indicator — usually when demons manifest in relationship to a priest, it's an indicator that that's the priest who's going to liberate the person. Demons are very tuned to the power structure. They know this is the guy that Christ intends for them to deal with. So I started being their exorcist. I did that for about two years, then was moved to take care of a problematic parish to clean it up, but I continued doing exorcisms for the Archdiocese of Omaha and a couple of other dioceses, again because there was virtually nobody available.

Then in 2011, Bishop Slattery of Tulsa asked me to found a society of priests where 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 people about what they can do to keep themselves protected. That's how I got dragged into it. I've been doing exorcisms for about 18 years.

Tucker Carlson: So when you started there were five capable exorcists, you said. How many are there now in the US?

Father Chad Ripperger: Right now there are 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 would I feel comfortable sending someone to, knowing they're going to get the help they actually need. Historically in the Catholic Church, this was done by mentorship. Even though I've written a book on diabolic influence — that's the academic side — you have to sit in on sessions and see how you actually handle these guys, because you're basically handling something like nitroglycerin. You can talk to people about don't do this and don't do that, but they actually have to see it. That mentorship collapsed in the 50s, which we talked about before. Now we're getting it back off the ground. A lot of the guys haven't been under good mentorship, and that's why there are so few that are actually very proficient.

Tucker Carlson: It sounds like a potentially dangerous job.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes. The church actually has what's called the praenotanda — basically a series of dos and don'ts. But there's also the mentorship training: look, there's a set of guardrails. If you stay in your lane and don't do something that's theologically daft or bad, you're relatively safe. Nothing grave is going to happen to you. Now, it doesn't mean you don't get knocked around a little. You're stepping into a boxing ring. They'll afflict you with certain thoughts or try to affect your health and things like that. But that's one of the reasons why this society of priests that I started is semi-contemplative. We pray three to four hours a day, primarily 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 it's actually you liberating these people and not Christ, that's when you're going to get taken to the woodshed.

We have a specific set of prayers to create protection by keeping us under Christ. If you stay in your lane, you're relatively safe. It doesn't mean you're not going to get knocked around a little, but the good news is the first two years of being an exorcist is the worst. The reason is that the demons are probing and testing every single area of your weakness. And they know your weaknesses because they've been watching you your whole life. They'll start picking at certain areas of your moral weaknesses and psychological tendencies that may not be necessarily healthy. 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 who became exorcists initially who didn't get that cleaned up and did get taken down. You have to really stay in your lane and do everything you can to eradicate any defect — spiritual, moral, or otherwise.

Demonic targeting of leaders and the parallels with communism

Tucker Carlson: It's very obvious to me that demonic forces go after Christian leadership. It's one of the reasons so many of them are rotten. I feel sorry for them. And also leadership in general — the US Congress has a much higher incidence of diseased personal lives than the American population, and that's not an accident because they have authority. Do you think that's true?

Father Chad Ripperger: Oh, I think that's absolutely true. As far as Christian leaders go, a lot of times they'll start out with good intentions, but 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. They don't know what help God is going to give to different people to get their lives together. They have no access to any of that knowledge. They hate each other. They can't stand each other.

Tucker Carlson: Yeah. They completely hate each other.

Father Chad Ripperger: And so as a result, the only reason they get along is because they have a common end, which is to take us down. The only thing that's left with the demons is because they were created in a hierarchy — how intelligent they are, they have a will that's proportionately strong to that intelligence. Different demons have different degrees of intelligence. What that means is that in hell, there's only one thing that's left: raw power, melded with malice and self-servitude. When people go into positions of power, that attracts the demons because they know if I can get control of this person, I can use his power to cause all this other damage, to take other people down.

A lot of Christian leaders go in with the right intentions, but when you're talking about politics or civil affairs where power is involved, sometimes people go in with the right intentions but then get corrupted afterwards because when you get that high profile, the demons are going to be spending a lot of time and energy trying to take you down.

The other side of it is that 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. They'll incline the person to go into that governorship knowing that because of this person's psychological compatibility with the demons, they can manipulate this person to cause all sorts of damage.

Tucker Carlson: Man, have I seen that a lot. You must watch the news with your jaw open because you know what's happening. I watch the news from a distance because it's almost like being in session.

Father Chad Ripperger: Really. Yeah. In fact, that's actually one of the reasons — there are two things I think you'll find interesting. I actually did a series on how communism and diabolic psychology are identical. When you strip the veneer away — one being political and the other being from the spirit world — the patterns of thinking are exactly the same.

Tucker Carlson: Is that true? Can you linger on that for a moment? Can you describe what you see as similar between the way demons behave and the way the Bolsheviks behaved?

Father Chad Ripperger: We see it even happening in our own country. Demons always present a temptation as this pie-in-the-sky great thing that you're going to get — all this pleasure and joy, everything's going to turn out right. But then once 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, nobody's going to have to worry about private property, the government's going to provide everything, everything's going to be peaceful and joyful, and it's because of capitalism that there are 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. That's exactly what the communists do.

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

Tucker Carlson: Oh, yeah. Hurting people.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes. Exactly. And they think it's justified to achieve this good thing in the end. And you see that exact pattern of behavior in demons in forms of temptation when they diabolically obsess people about certain things. Obsession is where the demons besiege their imagination and 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? Where you're just 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.

Father Chad Ripperger: And a lot of times the way you know it's diabolic is: if it's from yourself, you can usually put it aside and 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. It's this battle of just trying to keep that thing at bay.

Tucker Carlson: Being angry at people.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes. Envy. Another sign of diabolic obsession is it'll switch on and switch off without any external stimulus. You'll wake up in the morning just tormented. You're like, why am I mad?

Tucker Carlson: Or something will happen and you're just like, why am I sad, or why am I angry at this particular person?

Father Chad Ripperger: And one of the forms of diabolic influence — 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've got to get rid of this person," putting a perspective that there's something wrong with this person. Then you go back afterwards after the person's gone and ask —

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

Father Chad Ripperger: Yeah. Exactly. Well — but it is proof 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 is, and you start really seeking the truth regardless of the personal cost — they're like, we've got to get this guy out of here. The technical term for that is a snare. They can put a perspective on a particular individual — thinking there's something wrong with this guy, we've 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. So —

Father Chad Ripperger: Well, here's another one in relationship to politics — and you've probably even seen this in the news media industry.

The case of Satan as possessor — and the unholy trinity

Father Chad Ripperger: 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. The only reason I thought this has got to be the guy is because he was trying to kill this woman he was possessing. And for three 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.

Tucker Carlson: Which is what Christ said about him — he said he was a liar and a murderer from the beginning.

Father Chad Ripperger: So at a certain point, what came out was this: in heaven there are nemeses, just as St. Michael fights against the demons. There are specific holy people in heaven that actually combat them. Very often it's because of the fact that — for example, the nemesis against the noonday devil is actually St. Katherine of Alexandria, because she conquered him by conquering that particular aspect of human nature which is the tendency to be slothful and lazy.

In this particular case with Satan, the nemesis was St. Joan of Arc. The reason it was St. Joan of Arc started to come out over a series of sessions, as things are revealed about the dynamics of the case — why Christ allowed it, why this particular demon is possessing this person at this time. What came out was 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. The demon just completely freaked out and started running straight at me. 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. The woman who's possessed — it was actually the demon — goes and cowers in the corner.

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.

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 St. Joan of Arc is the nemesis to Satan under the aspect of treason through ambition. 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 but was siding with the English so that he could get a higher bishopric — he could advance in the church. He commits treason in order to advance himself. That's a description of a vast majority of the politicians in this country.

Tucker Carlson: That's amazing. You see it all over the place.

Father Chad Ripperger: So, two things I just need to ask you before I forget. 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 —

Tucker Carlson: Right. It's in a couple of Gospels, I think. And they say, "Send us into the herd of pigs, the thousand pigs." And the pigs drown themselves. They immediately commit suicide.

Father Chad Ripperger: Okay. So the two questions I have are: is it a feature of this realm that demons possess animals?

Tucker Carlson: Yes, they can possess things. The technical term for that is infestation, which is different from possession. Infestation is where they basically can get into houses. I've had to clean up a lot of houses and buildings.

Father Chad Ripperger: Physical places.

Tucker Carlson: Yeah. They like places. They like possessing them. They can also get into inanimate objects. I know a guy — there's what they call fortuna, which are little figurines, an inversion of the Catholic statue type of thing. They put a curse on these particular things and from there they can affect people. This priest ended up having a case where he had a whole bunch of those. He put them in a bag and put them in his car. As he's driving down the highway — he didn't have a chance to burn or destroy them yet — he goes over this bridge, not paying attention. Next thing you know, he's underneath a tractor trailer. The car is shreds — every single inch of that car except for where he was sitting.

Another priest — there was a case where a guy had killed his wife in the backyard. The priest found that the house was infested. When he went there, he said, "Let's take a look to see if we can find any remnants of this deed." He found a shotgun shell. He got 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 from there actually influence things.

Tucker Carlson: But have you seen it with living animals?

Father Chad Ripperger: I haven't seen them actually infest 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 lost 50 animals in the course of one year under really odd circumstances. One day they came out on the porch and one of their Pyrenees dogs just started choking to death — and killed it. They took it to a vet and they said, "There's no obstruction. There's no reason this dog should be dead."

Tucker Carlson: What do you know about cattle mutilation?

Father Chad Ripperger: Some of the cattle mutilation — the stuff I've actually studied — it's a little unclear to me about what the actual motivation is of some of the people that do it, but some of it is actually occult activity. They're inverting the sacrifice. In the Old Testament, all the sacrifices of the animals were actually just a lead-up, a type or prefigurement to Christ. What they do is perform these rituals as an inversion of those things in the Old Testament — sacrificing animals and doing specific things in occult activity to empower themselves. I've talked to a lot of police officers in areas like that and they say, "Yeah, there's a satanic coven over here," and they'll say you'll see those kinds of things where there's a high number of people involved in the occult arts.

Demonic possession and suicide

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.

Father Chad Ripperger: They have an animus delendi — they want to destroy everything they get in contact with. In fact, during one session I actually had with Beelzebub, which is another name for Satan, at one point I just said, "The reason you hate everything is because whenever you see creation, you see him" — referring to God — "isn't it?" And he said yes. "That's why I want to destroy everything."

So they do drive suicide. Now, people can commit suicide on their own. There are certain SSRIs that actually have an 80% suicidal ideation rate. People can have that inclination from that. But the demons will also begin picking at the person. One of the things the demons do is 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 is infused in their mind. They actually know what our DNA is. They know that because of this person'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 in that area. Their goal is not just to get him to commit sin and offend God — although that's the primary reason — but to slowly build a psychological compatibility, because each time you give into that, you create a set of habits and defects that make you much more easily intertwined with them.

What happens a lot of times with suicide is — not all cases, because some cases are entirely natural, a psychological issue that's brought it about — but every person that I've known who is 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 possession occurs and how it's diagnosed

Tucker Carlson: How does a person get possessed by a demon? And then how does he know he's possessed?

Father Chad Ripperger: There are three ways. The first is you commit some grave sin — like abortion, murder, engaging in the occult arts, which is one of the principal ways we see people becoming possessed, or selling your soul to the devil. You do something really bad and that opens the door. In the Catholic sphere, we call it a mortal sin. Those sins can open you up to diabolic influence. But 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 Christ just doesn't allow it — it's not going to be good for the person ultimately, even though they've opened the door. That's about 50% of our caseload.

The other 50% roughly is that something really disordered or grave has happened to you. One case I worked on, the woman was run over by her sister with a car. About 50% of our caseload are women who have been raped, molested, or psychologically or physically abused in a grave fashion. That disorder is the domain of the diabolic, and it can open the person up to getting possessed. People say, "Well, that doesn't seem fair." That's true in one sense. On the other hand, Christ permits it. And what you'll find very often is that as those women especially 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 realize, wait, I think I have some alien being in me?

Father Chad Ripperger: It gets to causation. If you're tormented because you've got a bad conscience because you've been doing a lot of bad things, well, that's probably not necessarily diabolic. There can be natural explanations. Sometimes there's hypothyroidism — people can become depressed as a result of that. There can be natural organic causes. But the other way you would know it is if there's no prior causation but you just feel afflicted. We'll get people who have been cursed and they said, "Yeah, I just sat down one day and I was just depressed from that point on, or I was just angry all the time from that point on." And as I mentioned, if it's diabolic obsession, it will switch on and switch off.

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. Tell us what you do and how you make that determination.

Father Chad Ripperger: Usually we'll do an initial intake or interview. We actually have a vetting process because we get anywhere from 400 to 800 requests for help a month. I always tell people I've got pretty good job security.

Usually what the Roman model calls for is you'll sit down, talk to the individual, and 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, did your father abuse 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 say over the person. 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.

Whereas if it's diabolic obsession, all of a sudden they'll feel this lifting and they feel symptom-free. They're like, "Wow, that was fantastic. I feel great." Now, diabolic obsession is by degree. If it's really entrenched, that feeling of freedom and lightness will only last for like four or five hours at the most, maybe a day at the most, and then it'll set back in. Then you'll pray over them again and you see this kind of dolphining pattern. They have to fight their way out themselves — we put them on a prayer regimen and a spiritual regimen to fight their way out. As you pray over them, it'll slowly lift and eventually they're freed. Whereas if it's psychological, it just kind of flatlines.

Tucker Carlson: But the high-drama moments that you described at the outset, where the demon is speaking to you through the person — sometimes in his voice, sometimes in the demon's voice — how often does that happen?

Father Chad Ripperger: Well, possession is very rare. Statistically, out of the 800 people or so that contact us, maybe four of them.

Tucker Carlson: I should have asked you to define terms. What's the distinction between influence and possession?

Father Chad Ripperger: Influence is the broadest category — just the genus of how they can affect us. They can influence by temptation. Oppression is where they attack your externals — 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 from there drive obsession and oppression. All of us from time to time experience the first suite of these.

Tucker Carlson: Yes. All of us are subject to what they call ordinary diabolic temptation.

Father Chad Ripperger: Exactly. And that's why the Lord's Prayer says, "Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from the evil one."

Tucker Carlson: Exactly. 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 is that they are rarer. So, possession — how do you know you're confronting one of those unusual cases?

Father Chad Ripperger: There are what we call the primary and secondary signs of possession. The secondary signs are certain psychological patterns, certain patterns in the person's life that 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 — something that a human being is not capable of doing, like morphing, changing shape as I mentioned. Or superhuman strength. There was a case out in California a few years back where an 80-year-old woman who had to have a walker just to get into the session — they had four beefy police officers there. As soon as the demon manifested, he just threw them all over the room. A friend of mine had a case with a 10-year-old boy. They had two police officers there that were 250 lbs each. He lifted them both off the ground at the same time with ease.

Tucker Carlson: Did you get unknown languages, foreign languages ever?

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes. Speaking in languages they've never studied. 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 once and be absolutely fluent in it. 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. Fluently, by the way. So this is not a psychological issue.

In fact, it's kind of funny — I had one case where Christ restricted what languages the demon could speak. Even though they know all the languages, he restricts them. In this particular case, he was restricted to speaking in Latin. So I had to converse with him in Latin. My Latin is decent, but once in a while when you're supposed to use the accusative, I'd use the dative, and he would just ignore me — like he didn't have to put up with this. Then I would correct my language.

Tucker Carlson: And who was the person he was occupying?

Father Chad Ripperger: It was a woman who was possessed — not a Latin scholar. Didn't even know Latin. At the end of it, I commanded the demon to consider the fact that he'd actually improved my grammar. He wasn't happy with that one.

Tucker Carlson: Do you mock them?

Father Chad Ripperger: It's not mocking them. I just inform them of things that are painful for them. Because you don't want to mock them — that's degrading, 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 their names, but you're not going to call them "hey, stupid" — they're not stupid. Part of that is because they'll be happy if you do that, because that means your speech isn't perfectly modest. And so they get power out of it.

Tucker Carlson: They'll take a beating to get that out of you. They'll take the mockery, they'll take you treating them badly, if it means they're getting power over you.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yeah. I think they're trying to incite you to become more like them.

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

Father Chad Ripperger: But you know, in talking about that psychological compatibility — we have 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. What are the qualities you see in people that are compatible with demons?

Tucker Carlson: What are they? Just to remember to avoid these things.

Father Chad Ripperger: It's basically 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 every single thing they do maximizes damage within their capacity to do so.

Tucker Carlson: Oh, yes. Oh, I know them.

Father Chad Ripperger: Even though they might have a veneer of respectability, they're in a position of authority and they conduct themselves a certain way. Everything they do — and they don't show any concern. A normal person — I lie, I have lied, I hate lying, but I have done it. But when I do it, you kind of twitch a little bit. You don't want to lie.

Tucker Carlson: Yeah. It's the people who register no concern at all about lying —

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes. That's a sign.

Tucker Carlson: Do you think?

Father Chad Ripperger: Yeah, absolutely. And that psychological compatibility — or people that are willing to just sacrifice other people for the sake of getting even some of the most modest of gains. The demons will be happy to kill a bunch of unborn children in order to empower themselves in relationship to one particular politician or another. They're more than happy to do so.

The other third sign of natural signs — so one is things that are beyond human capacity, which I mentioned, including speaking foreign languages. But the other one is occult knowledge, and that's in two forms. They'll make theological distinctions, as I mentioned earlier with this woman — the demon was making theological distinctions 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. So they'll actually know what you ate for breakfast this morning, or they'll know things about your past history.

One of the things you'll see from time to time is that they actually know your sinful history. If you go into a session and one of our assistants has some sin they haven't confessed, the demon knows that. As far as the demon's concerned, if you don't confess your sins, they still have power over you. Once you confess your sin, it's absolved and boom. 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.

Tucker Carlson: What about levitation? Is that a preternatural sign?

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes and no. There have been cases — there was a saint in the Catholic Church who would actually levitate when he said Mass, and he was a very saintly man. They even did exorcisms over him and nothing. So you can also have levitation occur in an infested building — people will be in bed and all of a sudden feel themselves getting dragged out or pulled up off their bed. That's very rare but exorcists hear about it from time to time. That doesn't necessarily mean the person's possessed. Plus, not everybody who is possessed levitates. Some do, some don't. So levitation is just not that common, but you see it from time to time. It's not a necessary sign that the person's possessed. But if you see a bunch of secondary signs around the person and then the demon morphs or changes shape and levitates, then you know — that's preternatural.

Prayer, fasting, and the casting out of specific 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 fire, having seizures. The apostles are unable to exorcise the demon. Jesus walks up, kind of scolds them, and then does so. And they say, "Why were you able to do it? We weren't." And he says, "Because this kind of demon can only be exorcised through prayer and fasting." What does that mean?

Father Chad Ripperger: It means that how you get a demon out of somebody varies. 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." We know that precisely from this scene in the Gospels — they were using his name but it wasn't having the effect. So they actually have to do prayer and fasting.

The prayer is to petition God — enough intercessory prayer, praying to him, asking him to do enough so that the person will actually be liberated. This is one of the reasons why we actually have people praying during the sessions and outside of sessions — people spending hours praying for the person's liberation.

The fasting goes back to St. Paul where he says, "Bring your body under subjection." You have to fast in order to get your lower faculties under control to some degree. By doing that, it's a meritorious work which God will actually accept, and you can offer that so that this person will actually become liberated in the process.

The other reason — as an exorcist, I fast six days a week when I'm in session.

Tucker Carlson: What does that mean?

Father Chad Ripperger: It means having one moderate meal in the evening. That's it each day. Nothing for breakfast, nothing for lunch, and then a moderate meal at night. I do that for six days. Part of that is because 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 to suggest something contrary to that subjection, you're going to reject it outright. They're going to get defeated very easily. By that you're also developing virtue, so you're empowered to kick them out much more easily. When we're weak, they can take advantage of us.

The other part is that you start to grow in virtue and become much more sensitive in areas you've cleaned up. People who stop using profanity — all of a sudden when they hear it, it jars them. It's the same thing in relationship to demons. As you fast, if the demons attack you, you're much more sensitive to it. That disorder — because you've got your body now rightly ordered — you quickly detect them. So they don't want to attack you. In addition to that protection, you can also offer that fasting up so that this person is actually liberated.

The people who are possessed sometimes will also need to fast, given the nature of the demon they're dealing with, in order to break the possession.

Tucker Carlson: You said you've cast out Satan himself once.

Father Chad Ripperger: Satan once. So Satan, Lucifer, and Beelzebub are the same guy.

Tucker Carlson: And Christ himself even said it, right? Because the Jews accuse him of casting out Satan by the power of Beelzebub. And he says, "How can a house divided —"

Father Chad Ripperger: Yeah. "How can Satan cast out Satan?" So the Patristic commentators on the scripture said that's an indicator that Satan and Beelzebub were the same guy. And then Lucifer was his originally assigned name — Lucifer comes from lucere, which means to bear light. He was supposed to enlighten our minds. That was his originally assigned task and he refused to do so.

I actually had a case where 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've got to tell this guy X, Y, and Z." Out of the blue, the demon just blurts out — it was Beelzebub — "I'm the mockery of the Holy Spirit." And then he checks out. I can't get him back to the surface regardless of what prayers I do.

So I'm thinking to myself, I know Beelzebub and Satan are the same guy. I started praying, getting some grace to see what am I seeing here. We also know that Lucifer was his original name. And it dawns on me — as an exorcist, we deal with cases of dissociative identity disorder, which is multiple personality. It looks like possession but it's actually not. It dawned on me: this guy has a tripartite personality. So during the next session, I referred to Beelzebub as the third personality of Satan, and he just lit up — "How did you ever figure that out?"

So then I basically beat it out of him. 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, which we read in St. John's Gospel. And then Satan is the inversion of God the Father. So you basically have this unholy trinity.

I commanded him to tell me: was this tripartite personality the punishment for wanting to be God? 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 suffer — he's in constant pain as a result of this tripartite personality. I thought to myself, somebody had to have talked about this historically. Lo and behold, there was a case in France in the 1600s where this exact same thing played itself out. And the fathers talk about it in bits and pieces. So his personality was punished with this tripartite split, and that would explain why exorcists would experience Beelzebub, Lucifer, and Satan in very different ways.

Tucker Carlson: What about this — who invited Satan rather than one of the lesser demons?

Father Chad Ripperger: It wasn't actually a guy. It was a woman who became possessed by Satan because she was the victim of satanic ritual abuse. Literally right off the bat in her life.

Tucker Carlson: How common is that?

Father Chad Ripperger: When I first started doing exorcism work, most of the cases we would see of that were from satanic ritual abuse in the 80s, which is when it really picked up steam. Then it kind of plateaued out a little bit, but now we're starting to see a lot of cases from stuff that's been happening in the last 15 to 20 years. Probably if you're talking about 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.

Tucker Carlson: What happened to that woman?

Father Chad Ripperger: She was liberated finally. She's a very holy woman, a very good woman. She still has to deal with some diabolic oppression, but she and her husband have really come up to speed in their spiritual lives. I think she's doing better than she thinks she's doing.

Tucker Carlson: How long does it typically take to save a person from possession?

Father Chad Ripperger: It depends on the degree of the possession, because possession is by degree — how deep the possession actually is. If you have something like satanic ritual abuse, it's going to take a while. Whereas sometimes I've actually had cases of possession where things went quickly — one woman had been molested when she was younger but was never complicit, she didn't want it, and she always tried to lead a good Christian life. Three sessions, boom, she was cleaned up. Cases of children who are possessed go much more rapidly — usually just a few sessions. But if you're talking about an adult, usually the average case — and this is something even the exorcists in Rome have made this observation — the average timetable is four to eight years.

Tucker Carlson: Years.

Father Chad Ripperger: Years.

Tucker Carlson: Can you exorcise a demon from a person against that person's will?

Father Chad Ripperger: No. Because 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 people's lives like?

Father Chad Ripperger: They're miserable.

Tucker Carlson: Yeah. They're living in hell.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yeah. There was one case — 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?" I said, "Yeah." So I went in, and normally I would say a series of prayers to keep myself protected when I went in and protected on the way out. But I totally forgot to do this. I went in, started talking to her, and she was possessed all right — she was showing signs of preternatural knowledge. But she liked it. She didn't want it gone. So I told her, "Look, I can't really help you in relationship to this. If you want to cut bait 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. You got a medieval illness. Perfect.

Father Chad Ripperger: Exactly. And everything I did — I even took those tablets that are supposed to help you clean out the uric acid. Nothing. Didn't touch it. It's the most painful thing I've had. It is shocking.

Then it dawned on me a week later — you'd think I would have clued 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?

Father Chad Ripperger: So I called the priest that had sent her to me. He didn't pick up the phone. Two weeks later he calls me back. "Hey, you know, I would have called you, but I got the worst case of gout I've ever had." I said, "Dude, you've been cursed." I said, "Let me guess — right toe, big toe on the right foot." "Yeah. How'd you know?" I said, "Well, you've been cursed." 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." This time I went in and said some prayers to keep myself protected, but I also said a prayer which another exorcist taught me that is extraordinarily effective: "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." There's a reason for that — 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 and talked to her. No, she still liked the occult knowledge. She really liked knowing what her husband was up to, even though he was never around her. So I gave her the same story.

Tucker Carlson: So she was getting knowledge that a normal person wouldn't have.

Father Chad Ripperger: That's right. The demons would tell her what her husband was doing, and it was accurate. That's how you know it's true — it's actually accurate. So I left. About a week later, I called the priest who had sent her to me. He said right after I left, she ended up in the hospital and she's still there.

Demonic influence following spiritual progress

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?

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes. Yes.

Tucker Carlson: That's a common reaction.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes. The way demons tend to function is they tend to like to go after easy prey. But because Christ has perfect coercive power over them — as we saw in the casting out of the Legion — and they can't do anything without his permission, that also means they are his instruments. He can use the demons as an instrument of our sanctification and purification. So we overcome particular difficulties. 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, or to purify them, or to help them overcome a particular defect because the demon is using that against them. From time to time you'll actually see that. We call it conscription — "Hey, you've 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? So the experience is designed to instruct the person who's being afflicted by it.

Father Chad Ripperger: That's right. To instruct them, to gain knowledge about how this works, but also to help them grow even greater in virtue. If the demons are tempting you towards 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. And that's a lot of times why God will allow it. So the person becomes even holier, even more virtuous than they would be outside that context. The demons absolutely hate it, especially when you see in these cases of possession the women becoming extremely holy. I'll just mention to the demon, "You're becoming this person's instrument of sanctification." They'll admit it's true and they hate it.

Protecting yourself from demonic influence

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

Father Chad Ripperger: Well, the main thing to do is stop sinning — especially the more serious stuff. Stop fornicating, stop looking at pornography, because pornography is where we're seeing the real uptick in obsession.

Tucker Carlson: Really? You see this?

Father Chad Ripperger: Yeah. The number of people becoming diabolically obsessed through pornography, and even possessed — we've seen a drastic uptick. 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. Now that it became ubiquitous on the internet, you can do it in the privacy of your home. The number of men confessing it is pretty high up there.

Also, a lot of the pornography is cursed to increase its addictive effect. That was one of the things that the Satanists taught people in the porn industry — curse the master copy, and then from that the copies that are made will influence the people. So they do that and then people become —

Tucker Carlson: So you believe the porn industry is controlled by Satanists?

Father Chad Ripperger: I don't know if it's controlled by them. My impression is these are just bad people for the most part. I think they're influenced by them. It doesn't mean there aren't Satanists involved in the porn industry — I suspect there probably are — but I just think that the Satanists are the ones who taught them this is what you do and this will boost the addictive effect of it.

There was another exorcist — a good friend of mine — who had a case where the guy became possessed. Finally, at a certain stage where the demon gets weak enough that you can compel him to tell you how he got in, he said: pornography. After the session, the exorcist asked the guy what happened. He said, "Yeah, I watched this one pornography that had this one woman on it, and after that something snapped or changed. From that point on, I had to see every piece of pornography she ever made. I was just driven obsessively to find her."

So to answer your question, there are a few things. One is prayer and fasting — you should be praying regularly anyway. As a Christian, you should be praying. If you're praying regularly, you can pray for your own protection. A consistent, disciplined prayer life. The second part is fasting. The third is stop the sinning.

One thing that we have found — this is something that one of my lay assistants noticed about three years ago — we started noticing a pattern, because this is what we watch for. The people that the demons attack, whether through oppression or obsession or even temptation, are people where there's some area of their interior life that is undisciplined. They eat too much, or when it comes to chocolate they're a little too indulgent instead of moderating. Or the person just doesn't moderate their irritation or anger in certain circumstances. There's some area of their life that's undisciplined. Sometimes it's just they're not praying. You should be praying on a consistent basis every single day. If you really love God, you're going to want to be with him, and that occurs through prayer.

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. I think that's —

Father Chad Ripperger: That's exactly it. And also the prayer — because you're lifting your mind and heart to God, which is one of the definitions of prayer — it gets that right order in your own mind. So it gives you clarity. 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 area somewhere in their spiritual life — if people are getting attacked, you have to start figuring out where you're undisciplined. Get that cleaned up and it'll solve.

Tucker Carlson: Man, that is — I think whether you believe in God or not, you can see that that's true.

Hope for the country and the role of technology

Tucker Carlson: Are you hopeful for the country?

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes and no. If by hopeful you mean in the sense that human beings are going to correct this and 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. 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. I think Christ is going to correct it probably fairly soon. 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 tell people, look at Sodom and Gomorrah — at least they weren't trying to marry each other.

Tucker Carlson: No, it's true.

Father Chad Ripperger: So I think we've gotten to the point where God is going to punish us, but in a way that a good father corrects his son when he's doing bad things.

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. You said when you started, people with porn problems bought the porn and that's a small number, but thanks to technology it's embedded — universal porn use. You look at something like AI or nuclear weapons specifically. Hard not to think that that was demonically inspired.

Father 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. That's where the real problem is. AI — I mean, I use AI to do research. Although you have to be careful and vet it, because a lot of it is based on language models and what's out there generally, and 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 a very helpful and useful tool. It's a good thing. But we've already seen people are using it for evil. And this is one of the reasons why I think that as time goes on, the kinds of evil we're going to see coming from these things are going to be pretty significant.

Tucker Carlson: Well, Sam Altman's already announced that OpenAI will allow anyone to create their own porn.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yeah. That's it.

Tucker Carlson: So the cycle that you're describing is society falls into decadence and evil, and then it's corrected through punishment.

Father Chad Ripperger: That's right.

Tucker Carlson: And you think we're getting pretty close to the punishment stage of the cycle.

Father Chad Ripperger: If God is consistent, which he tends to be. Yeah.

Tucker Carlson: And that's not a terrible thing.

Father 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. God wants us to be able to see the effect of the evil. There's a certain sense in which that's already happening — the more evil we become, the more difficult and afflicted living in this culture is becoming.

Tucker Carlson: Yes. 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've got to get my act together. But that's not the whole of the culture. I think that all the time. For every aborted child, there's another homeless fentanyl addict or something. It all seems like —

Addiction, demonic influence, and sugar

Tucker Carlson: So last question, which is about drugs and alcohol and the role that demonic influence plays in addiction.

Father Chad Ripperger: 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 — also a natural thing that people can actually develop. But then there can be layered on top of that the demons actually driving the addiction. Through ordinary temptation, they can just say, "Hey, there's the alcohol again. Let's go drink. Let's go do this. Remember all this fun you actually had when you did this." So they can actually drive that.

The demons also have the ability to block our remembrance of things. Part of the virtue of prudence is the virtue of memory — remembering the right things at the right time. So you know, 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. They can do that.

The other thing is that demons can also — because they can act upon us physically, in our brain and that type of thing — actually cause a mimicking of addictive experiences. There was a woman I actually knew who didn't have the history or the habit-building of an alcoholic, but she had the tendencies for it and would struggle in that area from time to time. So I started praying over her for any demon of obsession in relationship to addiction. 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 — 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 relation to people who are possessed. Sugar is a big addiction that demons drive in people who are possessed. Really, where they just can't stay away from the sugar.

I had one case that was kind of interesting. I had gotten to the point with this woman who was undergoing exorcism for possession — she was a very virtuous woman. I was thinking, why am I not getting this guy out? At a certain point during one of the sessions, I commanded the demon to tell me what he had on her. He just looked at me and said: pop.

Tucker Carlson: Meaning soda.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yeah. So he checked out. I asked her, "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.

Tucker Carlson: Sugar addiction. Wow. I'm not surprised even a little bit. I'm just surprised you said that out loud. Because it's so clearly true.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yeah.

Tucker Carlson: Why do you think it's true? Because I've just seen it and felt it and I just know that there's some kind of connection because it causes compulsion.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yes, exactly.

Tucker Carlson: And compulsion's always a sign to me as a total layman — compulsion, really? What's that?

Father Chad Ripperger: The compulsion to harm yourself.

Tucker Carlson: There's no evolutionary theory that can account for that.

Father Chad Ripperger: Right. Yeah. Exactly. And a lot of times they'll look just to see what our dispositions are — as I said before, they'll drive those areas, the addictions, whether it's to a particular kind of food or a particular kind of thing. Although with men eating a lot of meat, I get that. But when it comes to things that are very addictive like sugars and alcohol —

Tucker Carlson: Meat does not cause compulsion. It can't. You can't eat two pounds of beef. You can eat two pounds of chocolate though.

Father Chad Ripperger: Yeah, you can. That's true.

Tucker Carlson: And then wait an hour and eat another two pounds. You can't do that with steak.

Father Chad Ripperger: That's true. Although they do know that chocolate actually reduces endorphins when you eat it, and it's even more effective in women apparently from what I've read from the brain studies.

Tucker Carlson: But with men, they say you just show him a picture of meat and his brain lights up.

Father Chad Ripperger: 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 you doing that.

Father Chad Ripperger: Well, thank you for having me. Appreciate it very much.