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 alleged inappropriate conduct involving 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 unspecified “incident” involving students which prompted Fr. Michael Lane, parish moderator, to contact the police.
Martins “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 parish priest aimed to assure parishioners that “all involved in this incident are safe.”
“A police investigation is still on-going,” Lane 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.
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.
The priest claimed last year that the podcast was launched in response to a 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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The St. Jude relic tour website noted Saturday that four upcoming dates had been “cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.”
In a podcast released Nov. 20, Martins indicated that he had broken ribs during a fall two weeks earlier, leading some Catholics to speculate that the canceled dated were connected to the priest’s fall.
But Fr. Lane’s statement suggested that in the Joliet diocese, canceled events were related directly to the unspecified alleged incident at Queen of the Apostles.
Lane’s text explained after “the incident was … immediately reported” to Joliet’s Bishop Ron Hicks, the prelate “supported our decision to cancel the remainder of the event and on the evening of November 21, Bishop Hicks cancelled the tour of the relic scheduled at two more of our parishes this week.”
“Bishop Hicks also informed the Superior of the Companions of the Cross Order of priests,” Lane wrote.
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.”
Martins has not yet responded to a request from The Pillar for comment.
A Joliet police officer told The Pillar Nov. 23 that she did not have information available on Martins.
This story is developing and has been updated.
