"The Devil Came": How Our Lady Saved Fr. Donald Calloway From a Demon in His Room

Father Donald Calloway, MIC, is a well-known American priest and promoter of devotion to Saint Joseph.

But before becoming a priest, (and even before he became Catholic) he led a disordered life, which included drug use.

The priest later began his slow conversion process that led him to Catholicism, and eventually, to the priesthood, after reading a book about Marian apparitions.

In an interview Matt Fradd’s Pints of Aquinas, Father Calloway recounted how a demon wanted to stop his conversion to Catholicism.

When a demon appeared to Father Donald Calloway

Father Calloway explains his conversion process as he abandoned his old practices. The first thing he did was put an image of Jesus in the room.

“I got down on one knee and said, ‘I need you, I think you’re real and I love you. What happened next I can only call it a divine detox and romance. God flooded my soul with such mercy [that] I began to cry.”

So he stayed in the room all day. “When I finally came to my senses, so to speak, because it was a totally mystical experience, I got up and laid down on a sofa.”

Something then happened that terrified him to the point that, 20 years later, he prays that it does not happen again.

“The devil came.”

“A creature appeared in the room and started to manifest itself–like literally taken on a physical form. I was so terrified that I couldn’t even move. If anyone has ever had sleep paralysis, it’s a terrifying experience magnified by a trillion.

But this was a living creature that wanted me,” Father Calloway explains.

“I was so terrified, I had to close my eyes. I was absolutely petrified. I couldn’t do anything,” he said, adding that he once used a Ouija board.

“I think the devil thought that I belonged to him,” he said.

According to his account, he did the only thing he knew to do: “From my soul, I cried, not audibly, but in my soul: ‘Mary!’

“And do you know what happened? Annihilated. The demon was completely obliterated. And I experienced the most amazing peace that I have not experienced to this day, and probably will not this side of eternity.”

But his mystical experience did not end there.

Suddenly, in his soul, he heard “the most pure, feminine, motherly voice” say, “‘Donnie, I am so happy.'”

“Nobody calls me Donnie but my mom. Nobody,” he said. “It was the mother of Jesus Christ telling me that she was also my mother…the devil could not touch me, because I was in the arms of Mary.”