Exorcism girl ‘drank mainly holy water’

Press, 8 April 1978, Page 7

Exorcism girl ‘drank mainly holy water’

NZPA-Reuter Aschaffenburg, I West Germany 1 The voice of a young woman who died after being exorciseo was heard again yesterday in a dramatic tape! recording played to a hushed court'. In the recording, a student teacher, Anneliese Michel, screamed, whined, and cursed at an elderiy Romani Catholic priest as he tried to i drive out devils they both | believed were infesting her I body.

The tape was played at! the request of lawyers defending two priests and! the girl’s devoutly Roman! Catholic parents, jointly ac-; cused of causing her death; July, 1976, by neglecting to summon medical aid. As the eerie scene was re-i lived, Miss Michel’s younger | sister rushed from the pack- 1

i ed court, sobbing loudly. Her 1 mother turned pale several times and snuffled into a handkerchief, but her father showed no sign of emotion. The first of three tapes to !be played to the court was made on October 10, 1975 — 17 days after the ritual began — in the woman’s bedroom in her family home at Klingenberg, a small town near Asschaffenburg. On it, 67-year-old priest, Wilhelm Renz, could be I clearly heard speaking in German and Latin. After praying, he urged the “devils” to depart from the girl’s body.

Father Renz said in evidence earlier in the trial, which began last week that he was convinced that Miss Michel had been possessed by six demons. Doctors testified, however, that she had been suffering from a brain

(disorder which made her prone to epileptic fits. . The girl weighed only 31kg when she died from undernourishment. Fellow students told the court that in the last few months of her life she drank mainly holy water.

Renz and another priest, Ernst Alt, said they made 53 tapes of their exorcism sessions with Miss Michel. In evidence, Father Alt quoted her as saying: “When this is all over, it must be made public so that people know there are such things as devils.’’

The presiding judge has rejected a defence motion that the Bishop of Wuerzburg, Dr Josef Stangl, who gave written permission for the 350-year-oid Roman Catholic ritual to be carried out by the priests, be summoned as a witness.