A PRIEST and four nuns each face up to 20 years in jail after performing an extraordinary exorcism on a 23-year-old woman who was chained to a cross, gagged and starved in the cellar of a Romanian convent.

The woman died, apparently of suffocation, because a towel had been stuffed into her mouth to muzzle her screams.

Maricica Irina Cornici, who was brought up in an orphanage before becoming a nun, was crucified for three days while Father Daniel Petru Corogeanu, a Romanian Orthodox priest, recited prayers to banish evil spirits. According to the Mediafax news agency in Romania, she was a schizophrenic, given to rapid mood shifts, and this had persuaded nuns in the convent that she was possessed by the Devil.

The priest showed no remorse when he was arrested. “God has performed a miracle for her,” he said. “At last Irina has been delivered from evil.”

One parishoner said that the nun “had to be punished, she had an argument with the Father during a Sunday mass and insulted him in front of the congregation".

The convent is in northwest Romania, near Arad on the border of Transylvania. Bram Stoker based his account of Dracula on the legends and the notoriously cruel ruler Vlad the Impaler.

There is a greater willingness to believe in demonic powers and first reports of the incident suggest that the exorcism followed accepted Orthodox practice in the region.

The four nuns were first instructed to trace the sign of the cross in oil upon their foreheads to protect them from the evil eye. The nuns then chained the victim and delivered responses to the priest’s incantations.

At the climax of the ceremony the priest — according to the Orthodox Book of Prayer — is obliged to call out: “In the name of God Almighty, and the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of the victim, who is liberated and redeemed by the eternal God from the energies of the impure spirits.”

Orthodox seminarians are taught that the rite could end violently. The standard Orthodox texts on exorcism are full of stories of an epic struggle between the evil and the purifying spirits. Father Daniel and his four nuns appear to have gone well beyond the normal exorcism procedures.

When the priest decided to act, he bound Miss Cornici to the cross for three days and starved her.

Michaela Straub, a police spokeswoman, said that the five would be charged with “depriving a victim of freedom, leading to death” — a charge normally applied to hostage-takers. The maximum sentence is 20 years in jail.

The Orthodox Church, like Catholic priests, is bound by strict criteria before exorcism can be performed. The priest has to determine whether the supposedly possessed person has a record of mental illness; and has to gain the approval of a bishop. According to a 1999 ruling, signs of possession can include: “Ability to speak with some facility in a strange tongue, the faculty of divulging future events; display of powers which are beyond the subject’s age and natural condition.”

Miss Cornici was raised in an orphanage until the age of 19, when she travelled to Germany to work as a nanny for a family of doctors. After psychological and psychiatric tests, the German Embassy had declared her apt to take care of children.

Thunder claps from an approaching storm were the only sound as her coffin was brought into the church of the monastery at the weekend.

“This storm is proof that the will of God has been done,” Father Daniel said. “People must know that the devil exists. I find his work in the gestures and speech of possessed people, because man is often weak and lets himself be easily manipulated by the forces of evil.”

CRUEL AND SLOW WAY TO DIE

• Thought to originate in Persia in 6th-century BC, crucifixion spread in Middle East and was eventually taken up by the Romans

  
  

• Three main types of cross were used: the T-shaped St Anthony’s; the T-shaped Latin cross; and the X-shaped decussate

  
  

• The Romans reserved the practice for slaves, pirates and despised enemies

  
  

• Death could take between a few hours and a few days

  
  

• Most victims died from suffocation. The body’s weight hanging on the outstretched arms would prevent them from inhaling

  
  

• Jesus Christ was the most famous victim. Others include 6,000 supporters of Spartacus, and St Peter, who was crucified upside down

  
  

• Abolished when Rome converted to Christianity

  
  

• Non-lethal crucifixion is practised by some Roman Catholics as devotion but disliked by the Vatican

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