By Cecile Powell, R.N.

Most people who are born into this world are blessed to have a family that loves and cherishes them. Fr. Malachi Martin had just such a family. His surviving brothers and sisters and other relatives loved him dearly and must surely miss him. But God was very good to Fr. Malachi. When Fr. Malachi was ordained a priest and Louvain, in Belgium, August 15, 1954, God gave to Fr. Malachi a "second family." His second family consisted of the countless spiritual "sons and daughters" scattered around the globe he had "fathered" through his paternal and priestly love and concern for their souls.

Indeed, Fr. Malachi was renowned as a bestselling author, Vatican expert and exorcist. But his greatest joy came from helping the multitude of men and women who felt abandoned by God-- or weighted down by the sorrows of this world. This is where Fr. Malachi shined and labored tirelessly with an apostic zeal rarely seen in a culture so consumed with personal gain and materialism. Fr. Malachi embodied in his life his beloved "Jesus." And just as Christ had compassion on the multitude, so too, did Fr. Malachi have compassion on the lost, the disillusioned and those struggling to hold onto their Faith amidst the confusion and indifference of a society grown cold with unbelief.

Fr. Malachi loved being a guest on Art Bell's radio program. Fr. Malachi often said Art's listening audience allowed him an opportunity to touch thousands of souls via the airwaves. And people who heard Fr. Malachi responded to his tenderness, his solicitude and Christlike attentiveness. People who telephoned Fr. Malachi on Art Bell's program knew intuitively that Fr. Malachi understood them. Fr. Malachi could empathize with the suffering, because he too, had suffered tremendously in his life. Fr. Malachi's sensitivity and innate sweetness was contagious. People clamoured and wrote Art, asking him to conduct more radio interviews with this humble, gentle man of God. Despite the five hour long interviews, Fr. Malachi often exclaimed he felt "positively exhilirated" after finishing a show. Why? Because he felt he had imparted to the bewildered an accurate description of the Catholic Church he loved and the God who loves, with an infinite love, all this children.

"Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

Books By Fr. Malachi Martin

Windswept House: A Vatican Novel

Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Americans

The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church

The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Capitalist West