A not quite orthodox exorcism

The body of Maricica Irina Cornici

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.
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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.
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Read the complete article Priest held over 'torture killing' from Times online.

This has really nothing to do with the Vatican, but for my senior seminar final paper, I examined the Roman version of exorcism. There seems to be conflicting evidence on if the woman was in fact mentally ill. I think the priest who expressed no remorse ought to reevaluate his procedures on determining if someone is possessed or just sick.