Malachi Martin
Disillusioned by the council, Martin asked to be released from certain aspects of his Jesuit vows in 1964 and moved to New York City.
Martin's 17 novels and non-fiction books were frequently critical of the Catholic hierarchy, who he believed had failed to act on what he called "the Third Prophecy" revealed by the Virgin Mary at Fátima.
[1] His works included The Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1958) and Hostage to the Devil (1976), which dealt with Satanism, demonic possession, and exorcism.
Martin was born in Ballylongford, County Kerry, Ireland, to a middle-class family[2] in which the children were raised speaking Irish at the dinner table.
[6] Upon completion of his degree course in Dublin, Martin was sent to the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, where he took a doctorate in archaeology, Oriental history, and Semitic languages.
Martin specialized in intertestamentary studies, Jesus in Jewish and Islamic sources, Ancient Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts.
[2] In Rome, Martin became a professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, where he taught Aramaic, Hebrew, palaeography, and Sacred Scripture.
[6] Martin moved to New York City in 1966, working as a dishwasher, a waiter, and taxi driver,[4][2] while continuing to write.
[14] In 1969, Martin received a second Guggenheim Fellowship, allowing him to write his first of four bestsellers,[15] Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Living Americans (1976).
According to McManus Darraugh, William Peter Blatty "wrote a tirade against Malachi, saying his 1976 book was a fantasy, and he was just trying to cash in.
[10] Martin's The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Capitalist West was published in 1990.
[22][23][24] Martin served as a guest commentator for CNN during the live coverage of the visit of Pope John Paul II to the United States in October 1995.
[citation needed] The documentary Hostage to the Devil claimed that Martin said he was pushed from a stool by a demonic force.
[citation needed] Martin's funeral took place in St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in West Orange, New Jersey, before burial at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, in Hawthorne, New York.
[citation needed] In 1964, under the pseudonym of "Michael Serafian", Martin wrote The Pilgrim: Pope Paul VI, the Council, & the Church in a Time of Decision.
[31][32] Martin claimed that John XXIII and Paul VI were Freemasons during a certain period and that photographs and other detailed documents proving this were in the possession of the Vatican State Secretariat.
[13] Martin also claimed that Archbishop Annibale Bugnini was a Freemason and that Agostino Casaroli, long-time Cardinal Secretary of State, was an atheist.
[34] Description of this incident was embedded as background within a larger discussion of a meeting at the Vatican in the middle of spring 1981 between Pope John Paul II and his six most powerful cardinals.
Martin's mission was to ordain priests and bishops for the underground churches of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
[54] In his 2007 book Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, Edward K. Kaplan confirmed that Martin cooperated with the American Jewish Committee during the Council "for a mixture of motives, both lofty and ignoble...[He] primarily advised the committee on theological issues, but he also provided logistical intelligence and copies of restricted documents."
Once Martin's identity as the author was revealed, it led to protests "and the book had to be removed from circulation at a considerable financial loss to the publisher".
Kaplan judges the Roddy article as "dangerously misleading [due] to the credence it gives to the claim that without organised Jewish pressure the council declaration on the Jews would not have been accepted.
Claims that Martin features as a curial monsignor in full regalia on a prominent photograph next to John Paul I and his assistant Diego Lorenzi appeared on the Internet.
