Dear Carol:

Welcome to the Catholic Church. I praise God that you responded to God's call to join His Church.

The first rule of Spiritual Warfare is patience.

Back in the 1970's I felt strongly called by God to get involved in spiritual warfare ministry. Although I felt the strong call, the time was not right; I did not have the "green-light" to actually begin such a ministry.

I got impatient waiting for the "green-light" and began to get involved in spiritual warfare issues. Within less than a year I was seduced into the new age occult. I remained in the new age garbage for about five years. It took two major tragedies to knock me to my senses.

It was the second tragedy that finally convinced me to be the prodigal son coming home to God. In that incident I woke up one morning and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I looked in the mirror and was struck cold with fear. I had no eyes. Looking in the mirror at my eyes, I had no eyes. In place of my eyes were two black holes. I say black, but they were not "black" holes, but an abyss, a darkness that was beyond black. God showed me the state of my soul as He sees my soul, and my soul was dead. I saw a vision of my soul in hell. It caught my attention!

From that moment on I became the prodigal coming home to the Church. At first I came home to my Protestant faith, a few years later I found the True Church and became Catholic. The rest, as they say, is history.

My point is that in my hurry to get involved in Spiritual Warfare I literally lost my soul. If I had died that day when I saw this vision, I would have gone to hell.

When it comes to Spiritual Warfare we need to be the turtle and not the rabbit in the race. The rabbit may be faster, but it is the dogged persistence of the slow turtle who actually wins the race.

This is my long way of saying that, no, we will not relax our policy concerning eligibility to be a deliverance counselor. Those policies are there for a reason, very good reasons that have been tested and found wise over and over again.

It is possible, however, and we can allow you to begin training, perhaps, if you are qualified in other ways, but we will not graduate you until you have fulfilled all requirements.

One of the qualifications is whether one has the patience. If a candidate for training does not have the patience, then he is unqualified for doing this kind of work.

With all that said, you are certainly welcomed to submit an application, even now before you are confirmed next Easter, and we can look it over, interview you, and see where that takes us.

To your original question as to why we only take Catholics? Because we are a Catholic apostolate who serves the Catholic Church and obeys the Pope and Magisterium of the Catholic Church, and whose ministries presumes Catholic theology and Catholic worldview.

We do work with non-Catholics from time to time on spiritual warfare issues. In fact we once participated with a couple of Baptist ministers in clearing a house from demonic infestation. Believe me, that was interesting :) And we often have non-Catholics as clients. I have counseled with people of various faith groups including a range as diverse as Orthodox to Baptist. I have even counseled with a Muslim family who was having manifestations in their house.

But in terms of our staff, one needs to be Catholic with a thoroughly Catholic understanding of theology and worldview to correctly administer deliverance counseling.

For yourself who will be coming into the Church next Easter (again welcome to the Church), we require  least five years as a confirmed Catholic to be graduated. There is more to being Catholic than faith and an academic understanding of doctrine and teachings. It takes time to "think" like a Catholic to imbue oneself in the Catholic worldview. Where there is any lacking, our training will fill-in the gaps, but we need at least five good years of experience living as a Catholic.

Again, training may begin before all this, and we may even have you doing counseling under supervision before all this, but we cannot graduate you as a fully qualified deliverance counselor until you are five years into the Faith (and met all the other requirements).

This is a pretty standard requirement for a lot of things in the Catholic Church. For example, many religious orders require a candidate to be confirmed for at least three to five years. There are other positions within the Church that often require something similar. The reason for all this is to allow you to mature a little in the faith and to become fully Catholic before taking on certain positions, or memberships, or apostolates.

Bottomline: you are welcome to submit an application and then we will setup an interview.

If you are eligible in other ways and we accept your application, you can be placed into the program right away, as long as you realize that it will be six years from now before you can be fully "certified" by us. We can see how well this works.

The training program itself takes around three years, or more, depending on the person. If all goes well with that, you could work as an assistant Counselor for the other three years until you are eligible to be "certified."

The application link is on the Training page of the St. Padre Pio Center website.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary