From Dracula to this, those Romanians have some freaky spiritual stuff:
A Romanian nun has died after being bound to a cross, gagged and left alone for three days in a cold room in a convent, Romanian police have said.
Members of the convent in north-west Romania claim Maricica Irina Cornici was possessed and that the crucifixion had been part of an exorcism ritual.
Cornici was found dead on the cross on Wednesday after fellow nuns called an ambulance, according to police.
A priest and four nuns were charged with imprisonment leading to death.
Link.
Note: The article doesn't specify, but the priest and nuns are part of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Get Religion clarifies this and offers other good commentary. Link. Excerpt:
Sister Maricica Irina Cornici, a young, relatively new addition the Holy Trinity monastery, created a scene at a recent Sunday mass. The priest responded by shutting her away for several days, binding her hands and feet, and withholding food and drink. That apparently didn't do the trick because she was then gagged and chained to a life-sized cross, on which she was found dead Wednesday.
At least some of those actions occurred with the consent of several nuns. The reporters note that the sisters “showed no visible emotion” during the Mass for the soul of the deceased. One of the nuns, Sister Martha, explained to AFP reporters why the body was left in the annex of the chapel: “She can't be laid in the church because she was possessed.”
Father Daniel faces both criminal and ecclesial sanction for his action but it is not at all clear what will happen to him. The fact that he was allowed to perform the funeral Mass for Sister Irina will strike many as perverse, and it signals reluctance by both church and secular authorities to deal with the problem.
This morning, I spoke of this case with Matt Welch, an associate editor of Reason magazine who visited Romania last summer. He was surprised not by the action itself but the fact that the perpetrator was a priest. I mean, Romania is a country in which people still routinely blame bad omens on corpses, dig them up, maul the bodies, cut out the hearts, and ingest them as an ingredient in magic potions. That such people would crucify a living person to try to drive the evil spirits out of her doesn't seem at all surprising.
