EXORCIST Fr. Chad Ripperger, renowned across America and online for his often disturbing but always hopeful faith talks, was asked if most people would go to hell.
“According to the saints, yes,” he replied. That mystified and alarmed the interviewer, who could not reconcile the avalanche of souls crashing into infernal damnation with our Christian belief in an all-forgiving, all-loving God.
The Son of God, His divine Second Person, emptied himself to become human like us and suffered the most agonizing death, as Saint Paul the Apostle preached in the Sept. 27 Mass second reading.
Yet the Almighty will let most of His beloved children fall into the devil’s grasp. How can that happen when people just need to believe in Jesus Christ and ask to be saved?
“People don’t ask,” summed up Fr. Ripperger in a firm but sad and caring tone.
Plainly, God will not force anyone to join Him in heaven, just as the father of the prodigal son in the parable did not detain the wayward youth at home despite great sadness in seeing him go astray and sink in profligacy and sin.
God never stops calling
That doesn’t mean heaven spares any effort and grace to beckon us heavenward and warn those going the other way, as recent feasts show.
The biggest saintly celebration this year is the 800th anniversary of the Transitus or passing of Francis of Assisi, the first person to receive the stigmata, or wounds of Jesus, and said to be the most Christ-like figure who ever lived.
After his early years as a proud, warlike youth and his conversion during a grave illness, Francis renounced his pampered life and founded the Order of Friars Minor (OFM). It spawned other congregations: the nuns of the Poor Clares, the Conventual Franciscans, who include preacher and martyr Maximillian Kolbe; and the Capuchins, best known for the stigmatist Padre Pio de Pietrelcina, celebrated every Sept. 23, the first priest to receive Christ’s wounds (Francis was a deacon).
Among the most astounding stories of God’s relentless quest to save souls headed for hell, Bartolo Longo, canonized on Oct. 19, 2025, and commemorated on Oct. 5, became the “Apostle of the Rosary,” promoting the devotion across Italy after becoming an atheist at university, then a satanist priest during his lawyering years.
And the feast day of Padre Pio on Sept. 23, on which his church in Santo Tomas, Batangas, was elevated to an international shrine, brings two treasures of God’s mercy to global prominence: confession of sins and compassion for the poor. The Capuchin friar was renowned not just for carrying the hand, foot and side wounds of Christ, but also for hearing confession 10 hours a day with penitents from different nations, and founding a hospital for indigents.
No wonder the Padre Pio shrine has a whole building just for confessions. Reflecting the saint’s “profound compassion for human suffering, the shrine serves as a living haven of medical, physical and spiritual healing,” said Lipa Archbishop Gilbert Garcera, whose archdiocese includes Santo Tomas.
Every 23rd of the month, the church holds healing Masses with “holistic pastoral care and accessible Sacraments of Reconciliation [offering] dignity, solace and divine mercy to those carrying heavy burdens.” Notably, stories of blessings for ailing visitors and devotees are among reports considered by the Vatican in its decision to grant international status to the shrine.
That shrine is the second in the country, after that of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage in Antipolo City, elevated in January 2024. The Philippines is one of four nations with two international shrines each, among only 14 worldwide, including Marian apparition sites in Lourdes, France; Fatima, Portugal; and Knock, Ireland.
And we are told that Archbishop Garcera may be planning a hospital for the poor, with support from Kalookan Bishop Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, Garcera’s predecessor as president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.
To ask or not to ask
In his first encyclical, “Evangelii Gaudium” (Joy of the Gospel, 2013), then-pope Francis said: “God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy.”
And that’s the problem that could land countless souls in hell despite our Lord’s divine sacrifice on the Cross and his boundless mercy, most undeniably demonstrated in the first of his Seven Last Words on Calvary, referring to his condemners and executioners: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
We do not ask forgiveness.
For one thing, half the world does not believe in God, let alone the sin that offends Him. And even for believers, religious leaders and preachers have been saying less and less, if at all, about sin and hell.
When was the last time one heard a Mass homily with one or both of those words expounded in full throttle? The devil, too, has made a disappearing act over the decades. So, billions have no sense of sin or reason to seek mercy.
Which is why God may need to get tough with humanity, just as heaven is in the Oct. 4 Mass readings of the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
The first passage from the Prophet Isaiah (Is 5:1–7) tells of the Lord letting the vineyard of Israel run fallow and be overgrown with thorns, because of the sins of his Chosen People.
Echoing this divine disdain, the Responsorial Psalm (Ps 80:12–16, 19–20) speaks of Israel’s repentance, pleading for succor: “Why have you broken down its walls, so that every passerby plucks its fruit, the boar from the forest lays it waste, and the beasts from the field feed upon it?”
And in the Mass Gospel reading from Saint Matthew (Mt 21:33–43), the abusive tenants despoiling the vineyard suffer death.
The world and even the Church have done even worse than Israel today. What might God have in store to wake us up to penance and reform? Let’s talk about that on Oct. 11.