While the inner workings of the Roman Catholic Church seem mysterious, and the Church itself is steeped in what some may term archaic traditions and even odd symbolism, there was once a Vatican insider who dared to pull back the cloak of secrecy, and he made incredibly controversial claims about the institution to which he had once planned to devote his life.

This priest spoke about frightening and allegedly diabolical changes which he believed would not only reshape the Church, but that would ultimately spell its doom.

Father Malachi Martin was ordained a priest in 1954 and began working in the Vatican four years later. During his time at the Vatican, he worked as a secretary to Cardinal Bea SJ and also worked closely with Pope John XXIII.

In 1964, Martin asked to be relieved from his duties and moved to New York City. In 1965, he also asked to be released from the Jesuit priesthood. Over the next few decades, he would publish 17 non-fiction books and novels, in which he exposed the unthinkable about the Vatican.

In 1990, Martin wrote about the Church having actually been taken over by those who worship Satan, explaining this was the reason child sexual assaults by priests became so prevalent in dioceses across the U.S. and Europe by the 1980s.

Father Martin's time at the Vatican was lonely and frightening. [Image by Chris Ware/Getty Images]

In his non-fiction, New York Times bestseller The Keys of This Blood, Martin wrote about one pope in particular, whom he claimed was guided by Satan.

“Most frighteningly for [Pope] John Paul [II], he had come up against the irremovable presence of a malign strength in his own Vatican and in certain bishops’ chanceries…Rumors, always difficult to verify, tied its installation to the beginning of Pope Paul VI’s reign in 1963. Indeed Paul had alluded somberly to ‘the smoke of Satan which has entered the Sanctuary’… an oblique reference to an enthronement ceremony by Satanists in the Vatican. Besides, the incidence of Satanic pedophilia—rites and practices— was already documented among certain bishops and priests as widely dispersed as Turin, in Italy, and South Carolina, in the United States. The cultic acts of Satanic pedophilia are considered by professionals to be the culmination of the Fallen Archangel’s rites. (p. 632)”

Pope John XXIII [Keystone Features/Getty Images]

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Martin would continue writing and speaking about what he described as the “Superforce” of Satanism, which he said permeated the Church at every level and would lead to apostate popes.

In the late 1970s, Martin was interviewed by The New York Times, and the paper reprinted a portion of his comments following his death.

“‘There are ‘moles’ in the Vatican informing Moscow,’ he said in a 1978 interview in The Times on the release of ‘The Final Conclave,’ adding that he had written the book to alert the world to Marxist influences in the church that could affect the choice of the next pope. ‘I see these two great institutions in danger — the Roman Catholic Church and the United States,’ Mr. Martin said. ‘A pope cannot be impeached…. It was my duty as a Catholic and an American to reveal the secret negotiations now going on. Silence would have been the highest treason.'”

In addition to his books, he was a regular guest on many television and radio talk shows, including the very popular Coast to Coast AM, until his death in 1999. Many of his interviews can still be heard from the show’s archives.

On July 27, 1999, Malachi Martin died at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan from the effects of a cerebral hemorrhage as a result of a fall in his apartment. He was buried at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

At the time of his death, Martin was working on a non-fiction book, titled Primacy: How the Institutional Roman Catholic Church became a Creature of The New World Order.

In January 2017, Netflix began airing Hostage to the Devil, a documentary based on Martin’s book by the same name.

“A child possessed. An exorcist locked in combat with an ancient evil. Using first-hand interviews, dramatic reconstruction, archival evidence and Martin’s own words, this documentary film tells the true story of Father Malachi Martin, and asks, in the battle for saving a soul, just who really is the ‘Hostage to the Devil.'”

Nearly 19 years after his death, Father Martin remains a curious and controversial figure.

[Featured Image by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images]