CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp mistakenly thinks all the evil swirling around the conservative organization's Virginia offices is from another realm. And so last year, he called in a priest to perform an exorcism.
From Daily Beast:
CPAC employees at their offices in Alexandria, Virginia—about eight miles from the fabled staircase featured in the 1973 horror classic The Exorcist—found themselves suddenly in the presence of a Catholic priest. The priest, sources said, sprinkled holy water around the CPAC premises and blessed all the staff, regardless of their faith. As part of the rite, according to these people, the priest placed a medallion above doors in the offices and explained that it would help ward off evil spirits.
According to the St. Benedict Center, "The medal is a prayer of exorcism against Satan, a prayer for strength in time of temptation, a prayer for peace among ourselves and among the nations of the world," and "a prayer of firm rejection of all that is evil."
One source told the Beast that the ritual was "the weirdest thing I'd seen," while another said, "I had no idea what was going on."
But at least one CPAC employee, general counsel David Safavian, was quite pleased with the satanic ceremony, later tweeting, "Now that we've performed an exorcism on a recently vacated office, I'm enjoying my new private cigar lounge. Beats the heck out of the corner of the garage where I could get cell service!" (See tweet below.)
However, the exorcism did not seem to take. A year later, Schlapp — whose organization has been accused of underpaying its former employees (who quit in 2022), and who has himself been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple people — is still haunting the halls of the CPAC offices.
