A St. Jude relic traversing the United States came to a stop this week, while the priest organizing the tour faces an Illinois police investigation over inappropriate conduct with children.
The priest, Fr. Carlos Martins, is well-known for ”The Exorcist Files,” a 2023 podcast series featuring dramatic audio portrayals of allegedly demonic encounters Martins claims to have experienced in ministry as an exorcist.
According to a statement from Queen of the Apostles parish in Joliet, Illinois, Martin was accused Thursday of an “incident” involving students which prompted Fr. Michael Lane, parish moderator, to contact the police.
“The priest was confronted with the information,” Lane wrote, and “we informed the priest that he must depart from our parish and our diocese.”
While Lane’s statement did not provide details about the allegations, the priest aimed to assure parishioners that “all involved in this incident are safe.”
“A police investigation is still on-going,” the priest wrote.
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Martins is a member of the Companions of the Cross, a Canadian society of apostolic life which includes approximately 40 priests.
The priest has for several years led a ministry called Treasures of the Church, which brings relics to Catholic parishes across North America.
In September 2023, he began a tour of U.S. parishes with relics of St. Jude the Apostle, which are displayed in a carved wooden reliquary in the shape of an arm conferring a priestly blessing — the priest said that Holy See had asked him to conduct the St. Jude relic tour.
Martin has said the relic was made available for touring from St. Peter’s Basilica, and has “not [previously] left Italy for 1,700 years.”
The priest has described his relic touring as a “ministry of evangelization and healing,” with the capacity to lead to conversions.
“God is a gentleman. When God touches us, he does so in a gentle manner that we often don’t perceive. This is what God chooses to do through relics of the saints. If you give your heart fully and completely today – you will experience the presence and power of God today and unlike any other way you have,” he told the Diocese of Allentown in 2018.
In addition to his work displaying relics, Martins, who has said publicly that he performs exorcism ministry, launched in 2023 a podcast series called “The Exorcist Files,” which features dramatic audio performances of allegedly demonic encounters, and is, according to Martins, “intended for an adult audience.”
The priest claimed last year that the podcast was launched at Vatican request, telling the National Catholic Register that he began it when “the Holy See asked me to undertake a catechesis about the Church’s teaching regarding the demonic, spiritual warfare and exorcism.”
Martins said he chose to produce performances of allegedly demonic activity because lectures on the subject are “boring,” adding that “dramatizations of actual events give the listener a better appreciation of the adversarial nature of evil and what can happen when it makes its way into our lives.”
He also argued that he aimed to reach out to religiously disaffected young people, by “using podcasts, a medium with which they are familiar — to aid them in interpreting their experiences in a healthy manner and to direct them to the One that has vanquished evil.”
Martins said that the podcast had resulted in numerous speaking and interview invitations for him, and told the Chicago Tribune this year that “The Exorcist Files” is “one of the most popular podcasts in the world in the religion and spirituality sphere.”
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On Saturday, the Diocese of Gary, Indiana, where the St. Jude relic was to be venerated on Monday, issued an announcement explaining that “Due to unforeseen circumstances, the visitation of the relic of Saint Jude …has been canceled.”
Scheduled periods of relic veneration at other parishes in the Joliet diocese were also canceled.
The St. Jude relic tour website noted Saturday that four upcoming dates had been “cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.”
A Joliet police officer told The Pillar Nov. 23 that she did not have information available on Martins.
