A priest in Scottsdale, Arizona, has established a chapel
for the souls in purgatory in part as a consequence of his own experiences with
the departed on the "other side."
Father Doug Lorig, a convert from the Episcopalian faith,
now pastor of one of the most prominent parishes in the Phoenix area, says the
Lord has used a number of extraordinary mystical experiences to instruct him on
the deeper devotions of Catholicism.
Those devotions include prayer for purgatorial souls --
something that is not followed in most Protestant and evangelical denominations
(where the afterlife has just two destinations: Heaven and hell). The chapel is
called the Holy Souls Oratory and has the Blessed Sacrament.
For Father Lorig, going strong at 77 and full of the Spirit,
it's a matter of seeing some of it with his own eyes.
On about a dozen occasions, says the priest, he has
personally encountered spirits of the dead, including at bedside during the
night, and has been led to pray their souls toward Jesus.
Father Lorig, who was ordained a Catholic priest in 1984,
and who is married with four children (and fifteen grandchildren), had some
special experiences while at Saint Andrew's Episcopal Church in Nogales (near
the Mexican border).
"It was built over an Indian graveyard -- paleo-Indians
who were peaceful," says Father Lorig, pastor of Saint Maria Goretti
parish (he is not associated with previous claims at this church of the
supernatural).
"While we were digging a sacrarium -- a dry well [for
proper disposal of Communion wine] -- the workmen came upon hand-made pots. We
called the University of Arizona, which had paleontologists, and they came
down.
"It was very interesting," says the priest.
"They asked -- these archeologists from the university -- if there had
been any paranormal events associated with finding the pots. There had been
two. Every time I crossed the church and sat at a pew it squeaked, but there
was also a similar squeak in a pew across the way -- as if someone was sitting
down there as well. I discerned that an elderly man was following me and called
the man who had been pastor before me and asked if he had experienced anything.
He hadn't. But his wife did: she felt an old Indian followed her around --
'harmless,' but a soul who didn't belong there.
"The night before the archeologists came, I had a
dream. In it I saw a desert hill and an old man, bent over and carrying a young
girl -- eight or nine, maybe younger; her hair was falling down and he was
grieving.
"I woke up and wondered, 'what was that?' It turned out
that they found a pot with the remains of a cremated old man and smaller one
with the remains of a young girl -- bone fragments in the pots that were a
thousand years old. They were Las Trincheras Indians. I got the feeling the
girl had died tragically and the old man was her grandfather."
Once he prayed for them, the disturbances and feelings
stopped.
It was as if a soul that apparently had wandered for ten centuries
or at least manifested for that long simply needed prayer and acknowledgement
-- and now was at peace. Father Lorig was told by a friend who has Indian
ancestry that they believe an Indian has two souls, one that guards the grave
and the other that goes on to the Great Spirit.
The priest, who is also author of a book, A Father's Heart:
Rosary Meditations for Dads, recounts a time when out of the blue he was sent
1,300 holy cards that someone in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, had collected from
funerals -- and set about celebrating Mass for each one. "From then on
there were many instances," he says of the experiences. "It started
out scaring me." says Father Lorig. Before becoming Catholic Father Lorig
says he went to Phoenix for a convention and in the middle of the night woke up
and opened his eyes only to a woman with a little dog at the foot of the bed.
"I yelled out loud," says Father Lorig. "The
next morning I went down to the desk and
asked how long the man who was there had worked there and asked if a woman and
a dog killed here and he said yes, there was a woman and her dog who had been
killed in an accident on the street outside the hotel."
"In Dallas there were experiences with the dead that
scared me," says the cleric. "I told God, 'stop this. If this is
something you're doing, I don't want it.' I'd wake up in the middle of the
night and see the spirit of a dead person."
But the sightings were in association, he soon realized,
with intercession the Lord desired.
In one case he buried a 17-year-old boy named Tony, who had
been involved with drugs and committed suicide. "I prayed for him at every
Mass for a year and about a year later went to Queen of Heaven Cemetery for
another funeral, of newborn, and parked car at far end of cemetery," says
Father Doug. "I then went to the canopy and said prayers and consoled the
family and was walking back past all these graves and just stopped because someone
was calling my name.
"'Father Doug, Father Doug.'
"And there was nobody there.
"I looked down -- and there was Tony's grave! I
happened to be right there. And I had a locution.
"I heard him clearly say to me, 'Father Doug: thank
you.'"
Some souls do their purgatory on earth, says the priest;
some are earthbound -- tied to a place of sin or grief, something they can not
let go. The priest cites one case in which a young girl saw the spirit of
another priest who had no mouth; as it turned out, the poor priest had
committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth.
The priest has found an effective formula is to have a Mass
said for any soul that seems to be disturbing a place and gently telling the
soul, "Call to Jesus. Keep saying 'Jesus' over and over, until He
comes."