Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Become Who You Are
#671 Spiritual Warfare: The Most Powerful Saints In Exorcisms--With Expert and Author Charles Fraune
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Charles Fraune—author, teacher, and founder of Slaying Dragons Press—joins us to unpack what exorcists and former occultists are seeing now, and why ordinary believers need extraordinary clarity.
For young adults discerning marriage, fatherhood, or religious life, we offer a blunt but hopeful plan: pursue heroic virtue now, simplify your life, and let Mary lead you to her Son. If you’ve sensed that these are not ordinary times, you’re not alone—and you’re not powerless.
We talk about choosing patrons for the times: Padre Pio for perseverance and purity, St. Alphonsus Liguori for moral clarity, and Bartolo Longo, once a consecrated satanic priest, who staked his salvation on Our Lady’s promises and became a trumpet for the Rosary. We explore why demons fear Mary, how the Communion of Saints actually works, and what happens when you swap doom-scrolling and games for sacraments, Scripture, silence, and real friendship. The throughline is practical: close the portals (porn and gaming), curate your inputs, live the truth.
Visit Charles Fraune and get a copy of "The Most Powerful Saints in Exorcisms"! Slaying Dragons Press!
Here are the links to Jack's Substack and X https://x.com/JP2Renewal
All of your sins, all of your sinful baggage, all of your sinful habits, your disordered passions, and start to crucify them aggressively. Because you're not, in one sense, you're not marryable until you have, because you're going to take your baggage and give it to somebody else. And then like five or 10 years down the road, you're going to have maritable problems. Or Satan wins as he keeps us distracted by so many different things. Even just addicted to Twitter, scrolling on Twitter, oh, this news, that news, this news, that news, this sensational thing, this video. That's just one way he keeps us distracted.
SPEAKER_01:I'm here today with Charles Fronny. He holds a Masters of Arts and Theology from Christendom College as well as an advanced apostolic catechetical diploma. Try to say that five times real quick, right? He has taught the faith to nearly every age group for the fast past 20 years, from CCD to adult formation, spent 10 years as a high school theology teacher, also spent a few years in seminary formation before deciding to get married and have children. He's the founder of Slaying Dragons Press, the author of six books, Slaying Dragons with Exorcists and What We Should Know, The Rise of the Occult, What Exorcists and Former Occultists want you to know, and The Occult Among Us, Exorcist and Former Occultist exposed the nature of this modern evil. He has endorsements from prominent bishops and exorcists. He has a website, SlayingDragonsPress.com, which of course we'll put in the show notes. It's definitely worth taking a look at. Today we're going to be talking about the most powerful saints and exorcisms. So Charles, welcome. Good to have you here. Thank you, Jack. Thanks for having me on. It's good to be here. I was telling you before we came on about Claymore, the big sword behind me. So our audience is growing with young people. And it's really exciting to see. We have an apostlet for them called Claymore. It's the Claymore sword. These are guys that voted, uh Charles, for Donald Trump. They sense something's wrong, but wondering, okay, now what do we do? You know, we sense something's wrong. We voted for him. Um, this is a great time to be out speaking to them. They're understanding the spiritual warfare that we're in. Is this spiritual warfare? I I would suppose that you think it's real, huh, Charles?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Especially in this age, it's as sometimes I like to put it um when I'm talking about the material in my books, that spiritual warfare is not an optional devotion. Like you have novenas and saints you can be devoted to, rosary, though that's really core. But spiritual warfare is part of the Christian life. So we all need to be attuned to it and know how to how to deal with it.
SPEAKER_01:Let me ask you this. We all sense something, especially uh coming out of COVID for years now. We sense something new, something really powerful at work. Are we in unprecedented territory, would you say, from a historical standpoint? You've done a lot of work on this. And you know, I've been around for a while too, Charles. And I I sense, and most of the people I talk to, they sense something is really going on today that's different than other times.
SPEAKER_00:Do you sense that? I do, and several things you just made me think of. In in The Rise of the Occult, I think it's in that one, might also be in The Occult Among Us. Let me hold them up. The uh the two occult books that you mentioned earlier. They are based on the same research. One of them has a chapter, and both of them have material on COVID from the perspective of former occultists that I interviewed and exorcists that I interviewed. And they all raise the alarm, like there's something very bizarre about what happened globally, not just this virus, but the response, what the these tyrannical governments did. And there's one, uh, so ever since my conversion, had my conversion when I was 20, so 25 years ago, I've always been Catholic, but I call it a conversion because my faith was so weak that when I came back to Christ, it was like I did it for the first time. Um, but I've always sensed that we live in some strange era. Perhaps, you know, one generation is going to live through the end of the world. We'll see Christ descend from the heavens at judgment day. One generation will see it with living eyes. Um, most don't, but there's one prominent scholar now, he's on the scene doing a lot of work, Joshua Charles, and he did an interview, uh I think it was with Crisis Magazine, on the Antichrist and the Last Days. And from his perspective, as kind of an expert on the church fathers, he's like, our age is very peculiar, you know, is kind of checking a lot of those boxes that of things that our Lord warned about, the saints warned about, sacred scriptures clear about before the Antichrist comes and the end of the world. So we're living through times that very well could be the end. We don't know. But he did clarify too of something I had always wondered about. Not every generation in the history of the church has thought that they're living through the last age. And that's a common misconception. Some eras, and he quoted, like the 11th century, like the way things were going is like, nope, the antichrist is nowhere near. We don't have the signs. Our Lord gave us specific signs to look out for. So definitely we're living in strange, strange times. We look at the internet, the global, the globalism. Globalism has never been a thing. The internet has never been a thing. I could call somebody in China, like right now. I could probably call somebody on the International Space Station if I had the right phone. Like this is this is just a bizarre era. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, uh Klaus Schwab and his guys at the World Economic Forum, uh, you know, they wrote uh the the Great Reset, COVID-19, and we saw this. I I think, you know, from our perspective, uh Charles, I'd like to get your point on this too, and I think you you know you made part of it already. You know, we always sense, right? And we we know that this is a battle. We we John Paul would always say to young people, you know, it starts on the battlefield of the human heart, huh? That spiritual battle between love and lust, becoming a self-giving person and somebody grasping and taking. We understood that. He also warned us, though, very clearly, that we were in an age and it was coming up. You ready? Wrote that in 1976, two years before he became Pope. Uh you've probably read that. He was in Philadelphia for the bicentennial of our nation, and uh and he said that this is an unprecedented time. You know, um, you we're gonna see the anti-gospel versus the gospel, the anti-church versus the the church. And he called us out and he said it's coming. And he said, We're going to see it in our our time. He said in the very near near time. And then Sister Lucia, who had wrote written to him and Carnel Kafara, said, We're in the last great battle. It's going to be over our Lord and Satan, over marriage and the family, and we're seeing this, right? With the abortions and the and and and divorce, this twisting and distortion. So much is happening in this dysfunction in families. So tell us a little bit from your perspective, uh not only what you see, but what we can obviously do about it. These these these young men and young women that we're working with, uh, they are stepping into quite an arena. And as they're waking up, I'm sure Satan would love to twist and distort them. They're they're gonna need all the help they can get.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they the question of what can we do, when I first started doing this work uh when I published Slaying Dragons six years ago, a lot of my responses were, you know, prayer and sacramentals, the general wisdom. But I and I was hinting, though, at something deeper. And over the years I've been kind of hammering at that thing that's deeper. Like, if we're gonna survive, especially the youth are gonna survive spiritually. Physically surviving if you're faithful to Christ is probably not an option soon, once you know anti-Christian sentiment boils over, you see the spread of Islam throughout Europe. Like it's we there are problems brewing, like uh emerging. But if you're gonna survive spiritually, especially the youth, like you gotta be bold. Our whole all Catholics now really need to be bold. What I mean by bold is like live, we're very materialistic. We live in a materialistic world. We gotta cut that off. And it may even mean like social media, internet, phones. Though this is the way we communicate a lot, there's gonna be a transition. I do think we need to break from the web that Satan is using to keep an eye on us. Like he's a great like NSA. Like Satan and his demons are watching everything, and we're just making it easier to be manipulated through social media, internet, constant binging. Just we're we're very earth-focused. So I think that's one of the keys. The youth, especially, need to cast their eyes heavenward. The heavenly rewards, and that goes into our into the book, The Most Powerful Saints in Exorcism. The first couple chapters I talk about merit and authority in heaven, the value of our good deeds. Heaven, this is not our true home. Heaven is our home. You know, let go. Like this whole glow uh climate change fiasco. Unbelievable. There's so many heresies drowning our intellects right now that most people can't even most devout Catholics, it's hard to see what's true and what's false. Uh so there's a challenge, and I think people just need to be, you know, our Lord said the kingdom of heaven is taken by violent men, meaning that those men and women who are hear the call of Christ and are willing to be courageous and bold and get rid of every single thing that's in their way, those are the ones who take the kingdom of heaven, who reach salvation because it's it takes heroic virtue. And that's what the youth need, that's what we all need right now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. You know, it's especially when you're saying that uh from a practical standpoint, you know, we have young men um in their twenties, thirties, wondering about marriage and families and stuff. Um, how how would you address them? In other words, they get what you're saying. I mean, not all of them, let's face it, but the ones we're working with are either getting it or they're they're sensing this. And and again, that's why our apostolates here, and that's why it's so important to talk to someone like you, uh, and with with those resources and stuff. But um I don't want them to be afraid either, right? Uh to to go out into the they got to go out into the workforce, they got to figure out a way to make a living, but they also got to pay attention, like you said. So we got to simplify, you know, right? We're gonna go out, we're gonna work, we're gonna do our thing. We got to simplify, though, and get back to the basics and back to the roots. But what would you tell them? Look at you're a father, you have a you have four children, and that's what we're finding. We're finding these these young families that have the courage to step into this crazy arena and still get married and have children. How would you how would you tell them to simplify, you know, to to to say, hey, look at um money's tough right now, inflation, you know, and this this is all intentional too, right? To break down the middle class, you know, the government's way too big, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So give us a little advice uh coming from your research, your books, and and just your heart, uh, Charles, to what kind of advice are you going to give to these people?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I would come back to something I just mentioned. Um for those who understand how saints are canonized, the church looks for um heroic virtue. And so we're all called to be virtuous, but hero those who achieve heroic virtue are considered for canonization. But my thought is now, because the world is so broken and so many people have so many wounds and so many deep wounds and so much baggage, a lot of marriages are struggling. I know a lot of good Catholics, a lot of good Catholics who are married, a lot of good Catholic families who are struggling, both with their marriage and just with suffering in general. It's it's not easy. So I think our Lord, now, and this is one thing that inspires us, I think, among others, is St. Louis de Montfort said that in the final days, in the last days, God will raise up some of the greatest saints he's ever raised up in the history of the church. They'll be super devoted to our lady, and they will reach heights of holiness not yet reached by saints prior to them. And I think it will be because they wielded the sword of heroic virtue in an age that was slaughtering everybody. And this isn't the age of the Antichrist. Like our Lord says that he will shorten the time given to the Antichrist and come back at the end of the for the end of the world because for the sake of the elect, because even those that are destined to make it to heaven are about to quit. They're about to commit apostasy just like everybody else. So the that final age, which we may live in, is going to require all of us to essentially be canonizable saints, or we're not gonna make it. So I think that's my advice to young men and women who want to get married. Most people are called to marriage. I say two things. Purge your life of all of these flaws aggressively. You must look yourself in the mirror, admit to all of your sins, all of your sinful baggage, all of your sinful habits or disordered passions, and start to crucify them aggressively, aggressively, and then develop this virtue because you're not, in one sense, you're not marryable until you have, because you're going to take your baggage and give it to somebody else. And then, like five or ten years down the road, you're going to have maritable problems because you have issues. That's for both the woman and the man. So aggressive pursuit of heroic virtue needs to happen now. And then if you do that, you'll heal the call to the priesthood, monastic life, religious life, or marriage. And you'll hear it clearly and you'll be ready. Because in marriage, you have to have a lot of virtue, especially if your spouse has baggage or if your kids are sick or if money's tight, because there are so many forms of suffering that God is allowing. All of those are part of his effort to make us saints if we embrace them properly. So I think it's a great time where there's a lot of work.
SPEAKER_01:It's a great time. You know, Bishop Sheen, uh, Fulton Sheen, I'm sure you're very aware of him. And and he said that. He saw he saw this decline coming just like John Paul II did already when I when I was in high school, Charles, I was in high school in the 70s, and and when I was in high school, um, he already was talking about this, and he said what you just said. He said this is a great time to be alive because he said this is going to take everything, and you're gonna have to put it on the table because we're seeing the decline he said in the 70s of Western civilization already. And now, uh, and I guess this is my earlier point, we're seeing an acceleration of this movement. It's not only coming, it's here, and it's accelerating. And I think that's really what you're sensing. And that's that's the sense I get from what you're saying right now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's and if and one of the things the where Satan wins is he keeps us distracted by so many different things. Even just addicted to Twitter, scrolling on Twitter, oh, this news, that news, this news, that news, this sensational thing, this video. That's just one one way he keeps us distracted. So if we and plus we burn out, this is one of the things where I've criticized people young men about video games. Uh, this is just one, one of many. Porn.
SPEAKER_01:Let's add porn to that. Because between video games and porn, you can take a man down. Because those are the those are the portals, as you know well, I'm sure, those are the portals where the demons can sneak right in. You open those portals to your homes. I was talking to an exorcist, a friend of mine, uh, Charles, and he said, I said to him, I said, How are, you know, what's opening all of this, this, this miracle breakdown, family dysfunction, et cetera, et cetera, with good Catholic families. And he said, It's those portals of pornography. You're bringing pornography into your home. Are you not doing all the things we're supposed to do as Catholics, you know, all those things that you said. But it's gonna take even more, isn't it? Uh to first you're what you're saying with simplify is close those portals too. And uh, and then take some heroic stances and get to know the saints, get to know our blessed mother. Why does the devil hate and fear our blessed mother so much, Charles?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so this this among all the the work we've been talking about, having a devotion to our lady is is at the at the core. There's so many things are at the core, you know, devotion to our Lord in the Eucharist, the sacraments, but our lady's right there. One of the things I'm doing with Slaying Dragons Press is reprinting great books, uh, especially by St. Alphonsus Ligori. So I'll give this to the camera. This is Our Lady of Sorrows. It's uh selections of his writings, compilation of his writings on this topic. It is, no, I published it for a reason because it's extraordinary. Like the illumination that he provides into our lady's sorrows, our lady's sufferings, and our lady's love for Christ is just a game changer, essentially. Like I never really appreciated how much our lady went through until I studied that book, prepared it for publishing. I read it like four times, you know, as the one to publish it. So she can take us deep in the spiritual life. She will share. This is one of the reasons, like in the other book, The Most Powerful Saints in Exorcisms, the Saints, Our Lady being the queen of all saints, they can share their merits. They can share the graces, the experiences even of heaven, the experiences of their victory over Satan and sin. They can share all that, share that power, infuse it into us by the communion of saints. And our lady, of course, at the top, because she was perfect. I like the image and the way I'm looking at it behind you. Yeah, she's towering above you. And there's some image, and I can't remember exactly, you may have been seen enfants, there's some image about our lady that basically she was created perfect. And as soon as she started to be able to make choices, every choice was perfectly in conformity with God's will. So her merit just skyrocketed. Her holiness is incomprehensible to us, but of course pales in comparison to God Himself. So this is our and she's our mother, she is attentive to our needs. St. Alphonsus, among all the other doctors, says that if you're devoted to our lady, you're gonna make it to heaven. Like, hands down, no problem. If you love her and you cling to her, it's gonna be fine because you will persevere.
SPEAKER_01:When I came back into the church, uh it was a difficult journey for me. I came back on the deathbed of one of my brothers and who had been sexually abused, unfortunately, in the church. Anyways, he contracted AIDS. As he was dying, he had come back into the church. I'm the oldest of five boys. He was the fourth one down. He's the one that came back into the church. It's amazing uh how God can turn uh evil into good. But, anyways, I'm coming back in and and there's a separation, there's something holding me back, and I started to pray to our blessed mother. Would you open just a crack of my heart for your son? And sure enough, she's the one that led me uh really into a deep relationship with her son Jesus Christ. You know, we we forget about this. I I thought it was very interesting that Charlie Kirk, um, months before he was assassinated, started to talk about our blessed mother. He sensed this too, the our blessed mother drawing close to him, and he was talking to evangelicals and Protestants saying, Hey, you better start paying attention to our blessed mother.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, I remember he said we don't venerate her enough. That's right. Like, venerate, like that's a big word. That's a big word.
SPEAKER_01:And he he didn't throw those words around for nothing. He he when he said something like that, he meant it. When I was reading your book, there are so many of those saints in that book that that have been become friends with with me. I was excited to read about them. So many of them. So let's talk about some of those saints that people might want to draw up close to, might want to turn to. Say I'm I'm coming into the church now, we're meeting a lot of 18, 19, 20-year-olds that are that are maybe cat uh cradle Catholics, like you, like you said, got away from your faith or or or needed to intensify that faith journey. We're seeing a lot of that come in. And uh, and they need to reach out. We talk to them. Reach out to some of these saints, reach out to some of these people. Do you have a couple that you would suggest right off the top? If I'm brand new, look at I'm looking for I'm looking for help, Charles. Who should I turn to?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, what comes to mind for me, so I'll just follow that as an inspiration. Padre Pio. Yes, thank you. He's so great for us because we call him Padre Pio, but you know, a hundred years from now they're gonna call him Saint Pio Pio Trilcina because that's his official name. But for us, like we knew him as Padre Pio before he was canonized. Some of us were alive when he was alive. Same thing with Mother Teresa. It's hard to switch to Saint Teresa of Calcutta, it's just Mother Teresa. Yes. But the holiness of Padre Pio was unique. Like he had special graces that I don't know God has given to any other saint. And he could do that. St. Thomas Aquinas is the same way. St. Thomas Aquinas had special graces that he didn't give to any other saint. So a lot of saints have that. Saint uh Alphonsus Legori, for example, he was so well-rounded with special graces that he occupies a unique place in the church. So Saint Alphonsus Legori, there's one, I'll promote him. Uh Padre Pio. But there's another one, he's about to be canonized. And he might he's a powerful saint. But he didn't show up as much as I hoped he would in the experiences of exorcists. I get my notes down here if I look down. Uh Saint, soon to be, he'll be canonized in like two weeks. I think it's on the 19th. Uh Saint Bartolo Longo, the former satanic high priest. Like he was literally, he was Catholic, fell away from the church, lived in an anti-Catholic time, and became anti-Catholic, became a Satanist, was consecrated as a satanic priest. Wait, wait, wait.
SPEAKER_01:Now to let's let's let's let's pick them let's pick them apart a little bit because say that again, will you? I I heard what you said, but uh I want to pay special attention to this. So he was a Satanist, he was anti-Christian.
SPEAKER_00:Mm-hmm. So he was um and I feature him in my two occult books, uh The Rise of the Occult and The Occult Among Us, because he's he's now he's beatified already. He's about to be canonized. So in the mid to late 1800s was when he was born, and now I'm drawing a blank. I think it was somewhere in Italy, and it was an anti-Catholic, anti-Catholicism was was strong there. And I don't know when he I don't remember when he fell away from the faith, but he was Catholic, fell away. I think it was in the college era, college time, that age. So similar problems to now, and he became anti-Catholic, joined it, joined Satanism, the occult spiritism uh that that was very strong at the time. So he became a spiritist and joined these seances and became consecrated as a satanic priest. We have a lot of accounts of what happened there. Like there were manifestations of demons, the walls shook, there was lightning, it was kind of terrifying. And he had this personal demon that hung around with him and gave him answers to things and had friends who were doing the same things. One interesting note there is that the demon that was speaking to him and to his friends, the different demons, they were giving different answers to the same questions. And that started to bother Bartolo Longo, which was good. That was the beginning of him realizing this is this is a lie. Um, but it took the help of a priest friend of the family, lots of family members praying for him. He eventually had a crack in his mind and spiritual whatever was going on and broke out, abandoned it. Um, and he had a moment of despair. I don't remember when, he was already Catholic at this point, but he had a moment of despair where he thought back to his satanic consecration. He's like, wait a second, I'm done. I'm damned. This this I can't be saved because of that satanic consecration. But then he remembered our lady's promise of the rosary, that those who promote her rosary, she will basically make sure that they are saved. And he said, I'm gonna hold her to this promise and I'm gonna become a great apostle, essentially, of the rosary. And he was. And now he's gonna be canonized.
SPEAKER_01:I look at thank you for that. I'm gonna suggest it to some of our uh listeners. Uh he may be a good AI uh saint, you know, because because that's what I we feel with AI. You know, look at it like all technology, even like a phone, it could be used for good. Like uh nuclear uh power can be used for good, but it can also blow up cities and countries. I think AI is is like that too. It could be a weapon for good, but unfortunately, it can be a weapon for evil. When you were talking about that, so many of the uh social uh media billionaires and the elite that we we talk about, they also have this sense of uh I I won't call them Satan worshippers, but they have this sense that evil and and uh is speaking to them somehow sometimes. You know, I it and I'm not I'm being general here and I'm not gonna name names, but it's very disconcerting that the people that are actually running these programs uh could very well be on the side of evil. Any thoughts about that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it would it would make sense because we know from the temptation that our Lord received from the devil, you know, he gave him a showed him in a vision all the kingdoms of the world and said, All these have been given to me, and I can give them to whomever I would like. And he does. He he offers, we just look at the modern experience of Hollywood, all these like youth Disney kid actors who just crash and burn and burst into flames once they get into their twenties because they follow the Hollywood trend of total corruption. And some of them to become kind of satanic, just like uh openly and outwardly looking that way. So if you want a lot of people want power, and power is dangled before us. So I think about the lottery. When I drive around where we are, we see these huge billboards for the lottery, like you know, six hundred and fifty-eight million dollars if you get the right ticket. So all these temptations to absolute power, and some people can get it. So there is this easy corruption path.
SPEAKER_01:If I'm again new to this, I'm coming in. How does a saint intercede for us, Charles? In other words, you know, some of them are we're not cradle Catholics, some of them maybe evangelicals or or Protestants that we're working with too. They hear that we can't pray to our Blessed Mother, we can't pray to the saints. But now they're starting to figure out, well, I need some I need some friendships, I need people in high places to and and so how does that work? Uh you know, how do these saints intercede for us and how do we pray to them?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'd say one of the especially for a Protestant who's open to listening and thinking about this, the idea that once you die, if you are a devout Christian, so a devout Christian is friends with a devout Christian, if the friend dies, the idea that they are locked away in this hidden place, though they're with Christ, that you can't even communicate with them in any way, shape, or form, though you can with Christ, and they are united with Christ, and you're united with Christ, and you can talk to Christ, and they're with Christ, but you can't talk to them, that doesn't make it's illogical. And it does not contradict sacred scripture. Sacred scripture never says, I mean, we're surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. Um, the saints are reigning with Christ. St. Paul says that we will reign with Christ if we are faithful to him here. And so, so when what a saint is doing is they they are home. The saints went home, and our Lord can communicate with us from home. You know, our Lord is here in the Blessed Sacrament, He's here through the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. The Blessed Trinity works here on earth, but heaven's is home and he's drawing us there. So it's like this. So St. Paul uses the images of running a race in this crowded coliseum where people are cheering you on, the surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. What's that? You know, where are these encouraging witnesses if not the saints? So the saints are calling out mystically, you know, not with uh a voice that we can typically hear here. Just like our Lord, he doesn't speak to our ears typically, you know, except in special visions. He speaks to our heart, he speaks on the level of the spirit through the Holy Spirit, so the saints can speak through the Holy Spirit. Um, sometimes saints do appear to people like St. Joan of Arc. She had visions. And look at her, even a Protestant was like, wow, something was really special there. Um and she claimed all these visions.
SPEAKER_01:Look at look at uh uh you know uh um Padre Pio. I mean, he could be in in he could bilocate. Not only did he have the stigmata, and you're right, I was I was nine years old when he died, so I was already a young boy, he was in our time, had the stigmata, he could bi-locate, he fought with demons. If we don't think that that uh that you know we're totally separated here on earth, we can sense these demons. We could sense the spiritual warfare going on all around us, and to your point, Charles, in our own hearts. This is where it starts. Every single philosopher I that I read, you know, worth its his his his his His salt knows that there's a battle going on in the human heart. And so when you say uh the saints speak to us in our heart, etc., that's so true. You know, we know this, we sense this. It's like your conscience. I sense it when I'm doing something wrong. We sense where do we sense this at? We sense this within us, don't we? There's a lot going on within. And if we're not on our knees, if we're not praying, if we're not asking for intercession from these saints, uh I think we're gonna get blown around uh and and and blown right into the abyss, my friend.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, one of the things that I um that our Lord did for me when I had my conversion when I was 20, there were like multiple levels of the conversion. The first year was I wasn't doing a good job responding, but I was trying.
SPEAKER_01:But then our Lord said was there but keep that thought now, don't lose that. But was it was there a catalyst? What do you was there something that happened to you at at that time? Was there a catalyst or was it just a a growth?
SPEAKER_00:That initiated the conversion? Yeah. Yeah, it was it was night and day. It was it was a small miracle, I I put it. Like I was I was depressed, anxious, social anxiety. I dropped out of college beginning of my second year, could hardly function because of the anxiety and the depression was being treated, um, couldn't sleep at night, was blaming. I was irreligious. I left after high school, I left the church, didn't miss it. I didn't like the church before in high school. So I grew up not liking, not praying, I didn't understand things, never played the rosary, didn't understand confession, when I had my conversion, like what's mortal sin? You guys gotta I didn't know anything about the Eucharist or anything. Um, so I was crashing and burning. Um, 1999, crash and burned. Like there was only one thing left that could go bad, and that was leaving this world uh, but not by God's will. But I was yelling at him for three months, crying myself to sleep, yelling at him, blaming him, like, why'd you do this to me? And why aren't you fixing it? That was my prayer. But I was praying, you know, I didn't know I was praying. And then I had this inspiration to wear a small wooden cross. I don't know why why a cross? I was you know dabbling in Buddhism like any silly westerner at the time. But I was I I did a little of that myself, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Until you you find out that it doesn't lead anywhere, right? And you go, that's it's not gonna get me to sleep or to lose my anxiety, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so the that small wooden cross, and I didn't didn't really understand it, but it was comforting. Didn't say anything, didn't know what to say. And I went home for Christmas a couple three months later, and then there was a certain place in the living room where I put my keys, my wallet, and stuff, and right next to it one morning when it came down, right next to it was a small wooden cross, and I saw a discount sticker. They my parents bought it for like a quarter, and like, well, that's what I was envisioning. Nothing of something of no value, just wood and yarn, and that's what it was. And I picked it up, like, whoa, like wow. I couldn't even come up with a question and went over to my mom, like uh I couldn't speak almost. And she said, Oh, we thought you might like that. And then immediately I'm like, Okay, this was a supernatural moment. I was not a spiritual person. This is an act of grace. Even for me to think that this is a supernatural moment was an act of grace, and my immediate response was another act of grace that I saw as an act of grace. Um, I said, I must go back to mass. I said, I must go back to mass. I have never liked mass up until that point. So I started going back to mass, and I have anxiety, depression, social anxiety, uh, borderline panic attacks at that point. Those developed about six months later because it didn't stop, didn't get better overnight, which is important. The cure did not come with the conversion, the cure took like a couple years. Um, so I responded. And then my therapist, like all these great little miracles started to happen that showed me God is working, keep doing the work. It was not easy to to challenge social anxiety, anxiety and depression, panic attacks. Um it didn't go well for a while, but then it did, and I wanted to be a priest. Like, why I don't even know what a priest is, but I wanted to be a priest. Like all these things, it didn't make sense. So then, and this is where I get back to the other point. A year later, after a year of trying and doing this awfully, I was introduced to Mother Teresa and Saint Francis of Assisi. And I'm like, wow, like divine providence. I heard that term for the first time in my life. I'm like, really? God actually cares for us? This is you know revolutionary. And then um I got to know those saints and then Padre Pio, and then another level of my conversion happened. I started going to daily mass and confession and adoration. The floodgates opened, I started having all these dreams, these dreams of of the devil, spiritual warfare, but also dreams of our Lord, our lady, Padre Pio, and Saint Francis. And I remember almost all of those vividly. Because I don't think they were mere dreams. I think God was enabling me, which he does when we have in the first moments of our conversion, for anyone who's on the verge of a conversion, our Lord often just uh swamps us, just overwhelms us with spiritual gifts, consolations. He tries to make it encouraging, like this is a foretaste of heaven, this conversion. But then those wane, those will drift back, and you gotta get to work. Um, but he fortifies you for the work. So I had early encounters with the saints in that way, and that really encouraged me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00:A lot of that's in in my uh not all of it, but a lot of it's in my youth book, Swords in the Shadows.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I was asking you about that before we came on, um, because it's was written, it's written for young people, right? For youth. Yeah, teenagers, 14 and up, I say. So tell us just a g give us just uh uh uh uh uh the cliff notes on that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um so when I was writing my the first book, the book that was so successful, I was able to do this full time, Slaying Dragons, where I it's a compilation of the teachings of modern exorcists. While I was researching that and almost publishing it, I was invited, because I taught it at high school, I was invited by some of the youth to be a speaker at the diocesan youth conference, one of the primary speakers, I think there were four, on spiritual warfare. I'm like, ah, and they gave me a five-month head start, and as soon as I heard the invitation, I said yes, and I started brainstorming constantly, almost like it was an inspiration, like flood of thoughts. And I'm always writing down, like, oh, that's good, oh that's good, I got it with that. And I had so much material, it was supposed to be a 45-minute talk. I had like you know, an hour, two-hour talk. I'm like, oh, so that's a book right there. Let me put this off to the side and I'm gonna pair it down to the to the 45 minutes, and then after that I gave the talk, I turned it into Swords and Shadows. And it's basically taking all those spiritual warfare wisdom I learned from studying these exorcists and applying it to my youth, looking back and seeing what the devil had been doing to me. So I have concrete examples of depression, anxiety, the power of bad music, bad friends, all these temptations. Um, so it's directed at youth like, look, this is what Satan's doing to you now in this realm. And it's I could say so more. This could be like 400 pages, you know. It's actually really short because kids don't read. No, that's right. That's right. But it's it's short and sweet and to the point, and now as an endorsement of a prominent exorcist.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'll tell you what, I I tell you, you with with with your your new book, and we'll make sure when I edit this, I'll I'll I'll put this up in the screen behind us so it'll come through. But the most powerful saints and exorcisms, I'll hold it up for a second, but I'll I'll have it up. I'll have it up behind me. And uh the way you write this, you don't have to read this whole book at once. I mean, you you can take through, you can you can pick a couple of saints, you can learn a little bit about them, and I I would almost read it as a devotional, you know. Um, you know, spend, you know, read a couple of pages at a night and uh and and and meditate on that. That's gonna be a good way to to to go to sleep. I'll tell you, you know, for young people and so many of them, to your earlier point with your own personal life, suffer from anxiety, depression, even suicidal thoughts. They are into too much, let's call it garbage, right? Just too much noise affecting them. Everything we take in, some of these guys are you know know how to work out, they're starting to eat right, work out, but they got to realize that what I consume also affects my mind, my heart, right? And so we have to consume good food, we have to actually, we have to consume good books. We have to get back to that. We have to get off of those phones, like you said, and look at we can go on our phones, we can talk to people, etc., but don't waste time. Get a good book. I I think we're gonna go back to that. I think uh, Charles, uh, with AI, with all of the fake things that we're finding, to find good solid books, you know, go back and find the C.S. Lewis's and the G.K. Chestertons and the and the uh and the Charles uh Fronnie's uh of the world and get their books. And I'm very serious about that, and just meditate on those. You're gonna find peace is gonna come into your heart, even though, to your point, uh you might get a little uh conflict there because Satan doesn't want to just let you go, does he?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and you you reminded me when I had my conversion, like the the third level, I guess you could say, when I started when I went back to confession, all these dreams started happening. I felt inspired to purge my life. No, this was the early 2000s. We didn't I didn't even have an email. I don't I think I had a cell phone, but it you couldn't do anything with it except call somebody. I didn't even have a text at the time. But I had the inspiration to get rid of my TV, stop listening to music except classical on occasion, to drive around with the windows down, you know, in in town. Thank you. No music, nothing, except the class, no TV. And I would listen to Scott Hahn tapes. Uh it's like a book on tape, essentially, and read the catechism and the Bible. And then I was in college, of course, at the time, so that stuff. But I needed that quiet. I I made everything quiet. The input dropped down to very carefully selected pieces of information. That's almost that's so hard for a young kid now. Like, if I had been born 20 years later, I don't know. I probably wouldn't have made it. The situation I was in, I probably would have crashed and burned.
SPEAKER_01:Well, unfortunately, they're not all making it. And you see mental illness all over the place, right? I'm I'm finishing a uh uh a handbook of sorts, a devotional handbook of sorts for the for these guys for Claymore. I I I have I've written so much and I published articles, but I've never written a a book. And I'd like to include something. Um that's why I ordered your book for you. It's supposed to come tomorrow. And uh I'm gonna pick something out of there. I'll get back to you, make sure it's okay. So here's what happened. So this the young guy has asked me to write this book in 52 short, I call them acts instead of chapters, one for each week. And so they they they're brought into the story of John Paul II, mostly his teaching, and then but introduced to some saints and uh and and then QA. So instead of spending time online, we meet with each other and we discuss it. We're discipling each other is really what it is. It's one-on-one, two-on-one, and then we come together, you know, once or twice a month, depending on where people live, uh, to get together and discuss these things, to get together and take a book like yours and discuss some of the saints. And and I think this is why we could we could build up community, we could still get that social uh fix that we need uh that we're trying to get from from being online, right? So instead of just saying, hey, we're you know, I'm gonna just get quiet, you get quiet and you balance it with friendships, right? Real friendships, real books, real meat, huh? That I can that I can fill up my soul. Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because we need the social. It's so hard to get that now, especially because everybody's just stuck in their box. I call these their homes, the their boxes. People just stay there and turn into drones.
SPEAKER_01:We're winding down here on time. I can't believe how fast it went. I know that you've got it cut off and you've got some projects, and so do I on the table. So let's talk a little bit about your website.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so my main website is uh Slaying Dragonspress.com. And so I've written this book from Sophia. This is the only one that a big publisher's done. The rest I've done myself under my own press name. Um, but I've written now seven books. Six are from Slaying Dragons Press, and then I also have like seven reprints, and I'm also publishing living authors, translations, so it's kind of expanding. Slaying Dragons Press. So go there, uh subscribe. I I never bug people with lots of emails, but uh support my work because this is not not lucrative, but I have so many what I think are great books in the works, but it takes time, time is needs money. So um check it out. There's also an about uh page where you can support my work if you if you want, if you support my apostolate. Um the best way is buy the books and get some for your priests, family. Christmas is coming up, so yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, we're in spiritual warfare, so so I I think you're gonna get more popular, and we're certainly going to uh talk about your books. I I loved your uh website, very robust. And and again, you know, what you're talking about is exactly what we need today and and the seriousness of taking this spiritual warfare seriously. So, Charles, thank you so much. Thanks for your time. Uh, we appreciate it. Thanks everybody for joining us today. Talk to you again soon. Bye bye.