From Saint Catholic Lifestyle:

“In this episode of Beyond Saint, we welcome Ania, author of the book Face to Face with the Devil. But her story goes far beyond writing: she shares an intense and deeply personal testimony about her life before and after going through extreme experiences. Ania recounts how she went through a period marked by addictions and destructive choices, and how, after managing to leave that world, she experienced what she describes as a possession that lasted six years. During the conversation, she also shares striking moments, such as a priest’s reaction, who recommended psychiatric care, and an inexplicable physical experience she went through during that encounter. An episode, without a doubt, unique and hard to forget, and one that involves tremendous conversions through the apparition site of Medjugorje.” (And an apparition of Padre Pio!)

Due to the language barrier, we present parts of the transcript, translated, below, though there is also translation in the captions for the video. (Click here for other podcasts]

Background and Conversion

At the beginning, I didn’t believe in exorcisms. The church looked like the set of a horror movie. You would walk in there and it was full of cobwebs, and the pews were broken and full of holes. There were statues of the Madonna or saints—one missing an arm, another without a head, another without a leg. What I saw in that church are things that cannot be explained by human criteria.

Father Cipriano looked at me and asked, “Why are you here? What did you come here to do?” I just stammered; I couldn’t speak. He repeated the question several times, and then he said, “You don’t need an exorcism, you need a psychiatric hospital.” Then he placed his hands on my head, and my head twisted.

I’m pretty sure I ruined that last name, but Anya has one of the most haunting yet redemptive stories I’ve ever heard. After being in Silvio Berlusconi’s “bunga bunga” lifestyle of sex and drugs, Anya left to start a new life, and when she left, she became possessed for six years. During her exorcisms, she had a group of three priests. The most notable one in that group was Father Gabriele Amorth. The story you’re going to hear today will literally make you rethink your whole life. Thank you, An, for being here and sharing your story with us. Thank you.

Ania, what was your life like before?

Well, I was born in Poland. When I was 10 years old, I was raped by a friend of my mother’s. Because of that, I didn’t want to stay there anymore. I left as a minor and ran away from home. I came to Italy because they promised me a job as a model. I was young, a minor, but I left—it was the year 1998—and I arrived here. But I didn’t end up in Milan; I ended up on the outskirts of Turin, where they locked me in a garage that had been transformed into a club, and they tried to force me into prostitution.

You were sex trafficked.

Yes, I ended up in a sex trafficking ring. When I escaped, I testified against these people, who were later arrested. They were working with the Calabrian Mafia.

Okay. What was your relationship with God or the church like during that time?

Well, I didn’t believe in God, especially after the death of my father and all these terrible things that happened to me. Later, when I escaped from that club, I arrived in Milan and started working in fashion and television. One day, after a three-day party fueled by drugs and alcohol, I woke up at home because my dog was barking. Next to my bed stood an old man with a beard, just looking at me and shaking his head. He didn’t say anything, but I could hear his thoughts. Telepathically, he made me understand: “Anna, what are you doing?” Then he disappeared. For many years, I remembered that bearded man, but I didn’t know who he was.

Only nine years after this event, someone gave me a book about the life of a saint. On the cover was his picture—it was a photo of Padre Pio. I recognized him as the man who had visited me that night. That was the very first time I had contact with the spiritual world, and I began to wonder if something else truly existed.

So you had an apparition.

Yes.

Wonderful. And how did you take that apparition? Did you listen, or did you just brush it off like you weren’t interested?

At the time, I didn’t believe it. I thought it was just a vision, something belonging to a strange realm. I couldn’t find any answers. It was only later, after my conversion when I went to Medjugorje, that someone gave me that book where I saw his face. That’s when I started getting answers and realized that we don’t choose our saints; often, the saints choose us, find us, and point us toward the right path to Jesus. He found me there because he saw I was losing myself, so I think he wanted to show me the way. After that, Padre Pio was very present throughout my entire journey of exorcisms.

The Elite Circles and Moving to Medjugorje

You escape your childhood home that’s abusive. You get sex trafficked, you seem to get away from that, and you’re finally working as a model like what you really wanted to do. You go into a party scene of basically this drugs and alcohol-fueled party scene. How did you meet people and get into that scene?

Well, when you start living in that world and going out with the “right” people, doors just open on their own. I remember one day in Rome, I went out with the grandson of the last Italian king, Emanuele Filiberto, though I didn’t know it at the time. We were driving around Rome, and he said to me, “See this statue on the horse? That’s my great-grandfather.” I didn’t fully realize the level of society I was reaching; it all happened without me noticing.

One day, I was working for the top television and fashion agency in Italy at the time. My agency called me and said, “Ana, you need to go to Rome for a job. You have to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ at a birthday party.” I said, “Sure, what’s the big deal?” I left, and when the taxi driver heard the address—Palazzo Grazioli—his eyes went wide. When I walked in, I still had no idea it was Berlusconi’s house. A girl told me, “Look, when the birthday boy leaves the room using the excuse of a phone call, you get inside this giant gift box. We’ll fill it with balloons, and then you jump out and sing ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’ just like Marilyn Monroe.” I asked, “But whose birthday is it?” She replied, “What do you mean you don’t know? It’s the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.”

He was a very nice, very lively person. Yes, I can’t say otherwise. I remember once I told him a joke that he liked so much he took me by the hand and led me through the whole house to tell it to everyone. He always had a quick joke ready. He definitely liked beautiful things—beautiful women, beautiful houses, beautiful anything. Even the dinner menus he created had to be tricolor like the Italian flag, so there always had to be something green and something red.

Did you ever see anyone in his inner circle engage in occult practices?

No one has ever asked me this question before. Let’s just say I cannot answer that.

I got it. When you were in those circles, did people view…

Well, usually people didn’t talk about God, but I have to say that the presence of priests even at those high levels did exist. It’s all very complicated, but there is a presence of spiritual things because people at the highest levels of society who hold power know very well that the spiritual world exists. They know you can move a lot of things through spirituality. Every leader, even heads of state, has their trusted people who perform spiritual actions when necessary to achieve goals or to block competitors.

At the time, I didn’t realize any of this because everything happening felt normal to me. Then I became the girlfriend of Berlusconi’s nephew, and we were together for three years. One day, I decided to abandon everything and go live in Medjugorje, which is where my life changed. I lived with nuns for three years. There, I began to realize the gravity of certain events that I might have caught a glimpse of before but hadn’t understood the true significance of.

When the “bunga bunga” scandal broke out, I was never part of any trial. I’m not in any legal documents, they never called me to testify in court, and I had absolutely nothing to do with it. The only connection I had was that a few months before the scandal, a girl wrote to me on social media, knowing I was the girlfriend of President Berlusconi’s nephew. She wrote: “Look, I’m all alone in Milan, I just moved here and I don’t have any friends. I wanted to be friends with you.” I looked at her profile, saw she was a beautiful girl, thought it was strange she was alone, and we messaged a few times.

One day, a very prominent journalist called me and said, “Ania, I saw you have this person in your social media contacts. Could you give me her number?” I asked, “Why do you need her number? I don’t even really know who she is.” The journalist said, “Look, a massive mess is about to happen. A huge scandal is going to break worldwide.” Out of naivety, I called the girl and told her, “Look, stay away from those people because you are just a pawn in a power game played by people much bigger than you.” I said some other things too, but her phone was already tapped. Everything I said ended up in the major Italian newspapers, and suddenly headlines were linking me to the “bunga bunga” scandal. The only thing I had done was warn this girl to stay away, but I was naive because her actual goal was to get to Berlusconi.

I felt violated by the system. Just because I was close to the Berlusconi family as the nephew’s girlfriend, journalists who didn’t even know me felt entitled to splash my private phone calls across the front pages. I felt violated, and that’s when I said I wanted nothing more to do with any of this. One night, I took my car, packed a few things without telling anyone, and drove to Medjugorje. For two weeks, nobody knew where I was.

Those were the three most beautiful years of my entire life. There, I started over from scratch, like a newborn baby who had to learn everything. I learned simple things like how to iron, wash clothes, and cook, but they brought me so much joy.

The Manifestation of the Demonic

When you draw closer to God, the devil doesn’t let you go easily. After many years, I went to Confession in Medjugorje. The priest told me, “Anna, you are worse than Mary Magdalene,” because I was always appearing in the newspapers with one person or another, surrounded by various scandals. The truth is, I didn’t love or respect myself, and I did everything just to be seen. When that priest said that to me in Medjugorje, I decided, “Fine, from today on, I am living in chastity.”

I founded an initiative to promote chastity among young people. We gave out a small ring for free, and with this ring, the youths made a promise of chastity that they renewed every year until marriage or a consecrated life. I thought not even five people would sign up, but we reached 9,000 members. As I started traveling around to speak about purity, chastity, love, and faith, I began hearing voices in my head saying: “Shut up, you must stay silent, you shouldn’t speak, cancel this meeting.” It became so persistent that at a certain point, I couldn’t even think straight. I would be speaking in front of thousands of people, but in my head, I heard the exact opposite of what I was saying, along with countless blasphemies and horrible things.

So you would hear noises inside? Were they just thoughts, or were they actual voices that you audibly heard?

No, no, they were actual voices. For six years after that, I lived as if I were constantly inside a stadium during a major football match, with hundreds of people shouting. I lived like that for six years, often unable to sleep because it was continuous.

Did you think you were going crazy?

I was kind of close to it, because I actually have medical records from when I had myself admitted to a psychiatric ward for almost two weeks. I was also followed by another psychiatrist. The medical reports I received when I was discharged show that I am completely clear; there is no psychiatric illness. It is all fully documented from a scientific standpoint. I think it’s important to mention this, because the first thing people ask is whether you’ve been seen by a doctor.

At the time, I was in Medjugorje, and finding psychiatrists or psychologists there can be difficult, but it wasn’t just the voices. At night, doctors would call it sleep paralysis, but if someone does deep research, they will see that this phenomenon happens all over the world and is consistently explained across different religious beliefs as something demonic. It happened to me many times. I could tell when the paralysis was coming. I wasn’t asleep; I was awake. During this paralysis, I would feel a presence approaching me, and I would hear a distinct ticking sound, like a clock ticking down. Then the paralysis hit—I couldn’t move, speak, or do anything.

One time, I decided not to fight the state and just see what happened. I saw something climbing onto the bed on top of the blanket; there were actual prints, like hands or feet pressing down on the covers. It climbed onto me with an immense weight. I felt a crushing pressure right here on my chest, and a slimy, wet tongue licked me from my chest all the way up to my ear. From that moment on, I fought with all my strength, asking God for help to free me from that state, until it finally let go. Because these things happened so many times, it wasn’t just voices, and that is why I asked an exorcist for an opinion.

When this was all happening, did you ever feel God’s presence?

Oh yes. Those were six years of truly great suffering. Many people ask me, “Ania, how did you manage not to give up, to cope, and to keep fighting?” It’s because even in the deepest darkness, God finds you and always gives you consolations that allow you to take one small step forward and regain enough strength to keep going.

The First Exorcism

It all happened by chance, so to speak. I found myself in a city to give some testimonies, and I started feeling very sick. I couldn’t get out of bed, the voice kept telling me to shut up and cancel the meeting, so the people with me decided to take me to Don Antonio Mattatelli, who was an exorcist.

We went there unexpectedly. Of course, getting there wasn’t easy. I learned that before you undergo an exorcism, you must confess, because the demon can reveal to everyone all the unconfessed things you’ve done in your life. Before going to Don Antonio, I kept making excuses to find a priest to confess me. I even made a scene outside a convent where they didn’t want to open the door because it was siesta time in Italy. During siesta, everyone sleeps; you could die out there and nobody will open the door.

They didn’t confess me. While we were in the car, the others were praying, and I was repeating the prayers backward. As we drove past houses, I would look at the doors and say, “Horrible things happened here, they abused children here, this happened here.” I had never behaved like that in my life. It was incredibly bizarre even for me. When we arrived at Don Antonio’s, he said, “Ania, how beautiful to see you.” I answered him with a voice that came straight from beyond the grave: “It is not a pleasure for me.”

So as you got more and more possessed, you came to have psychic abilities and other supernatural powers?

Yes, I understand. It wasn’t me who had those powers, but the demon inside. He is the one who sees, knows, and speaks. Those weren’t my visions; they were his.

That was my first exorcism with Don Antonio. It wasn’t overly violent at that exact moment, and the demon wasn’t speaking the way he did in later sessions, but my body bent completely in half. I couldn’t stand up, as if a massive weight were sitting directly on my back. At one point, I tried to rip the crucifix out of Don Antonio’s hands. Then I saw drops of blood falling to the floor. I thought that when I tried to grab the crucifix, I had hurt Don Antonio. When the exorcism ended, I asked him, “Did I hurt you?” He replied, “No, I was only blessing you with holy water.” But I wasn’t the only one who saw that blood; a third person was with us, and she also testifies in my book that she saw the drops of blood falling to the ground.

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Physical Manifestations and Father Amorth

My exorcisms are documented. What makes my story verifiable is that we have nearly 100 hours of recorded exorcisms. At first, we took videos. Later, as the prayers became incredibly intense, it felt almost disrespectful to film, so after a while, we only recorded audio. But I still have some videos from the first two months.

When you were going through these exorcisms, what was the process like?

Unfortunately—and I say unfortunately because this was perhaps the hardest part of the whole experience—I remember 99% of everything that happened. It was as if my soul were locked inside a glass jar, imprisoned, where it could look and hear but couldn’t do anything. The only exceptions were the rare moments when the priest called me by name, knowing I was trapped somewhere. It’s like a child being scolded by a mean man, and then the mother comes along, calls your name, and says, “Come on, don’t be afraid.” Only during those moments could I escape from that jar and regain conscious control of my body. But remembering everything was awful. If you don’t remember, you just return to normal life without knowing what happened. Remembering it all makes living incredibly difficult, because you live in a spiritual dimension, you know it exists, and navigating this world afterward is hard. You have to find your balance again.

So you weren’t in your body; you were outside your body because someone else was using it. What else did you experience during the exorcisms?

As I said before, there was immense suffering. The first and hardest part was remembering everything and having to live in this world while finding a balance. Secondly, the demon hates you. He hates everything human, so he wants to destroy you. He would often throw me onto the floor or against the walls, slamming my head against the brick. If it weren’t for the trained, loving people nearby who would place a pillow against the wall when he threw me or try to keep me from hurting myself, it could have ended much worse. I would show up afterward with bruises or a sprained hand. Those were the worst physical parts.

Yet, the Lord also gives many consolations. During the exorcisms, saints descend, and Mary descends. You don’t see them the way we see each other; you see them in a way that is difficult to explain in words. Forgetting that love is also difficult. When you experience the love that comes from heaven, you can’t fully settle back into life here on Earth because you miss it so much. It cannot be put into words; it makes you wish you were already on the other side.

The first time I went to Father Cipriano De Meo, he was the dean of exorcists, with 70 years of experience. He was a personal friend of Padre Pio. When I first went to him, I didn’t believe in exorcisms yet—none of the things we discussed earlier had happened. I went there with Don Antonio Mattatelli, took a number, and waited my turn while making fun of and laughing at everyone in that church.

The church looked like the set of a horror movie. You walked in and it was full of cobwebs, the pews were smashed and full of holes. There were statues of the Madonna or saints—one missing an arm, another without a head, another without a leg. At a certain point, they closed the church doors and moved all the pews to the back so nobody could enter or leave. What I saw in that church are things that cannot be explained by human criteria.

When they called my number and I had to get up to go to Father Cipriano, I went from laughing at everyone to being unable to speak or walk. My legs turned to jelly and couldn’t support my weight; they had to help me walk over. Father Cipriano looked at me and asked, “Why are you here? What did you come here to do?” I just stammered, unable to speak. He repeated the question several times, and then he said, “You don’t need an exorcism, you need a psychiatric hospital.” Right then, he placed his hands on my head, and my head twisted completely around. I know it’s hard to believe, but everything that happens during exorcisms is hard to believe. The perception I had—which was actually the demon’s perception—was that he twisted around because he wanted to run away.

The person who accompanied me had never seen anything like it and stood near the door with eyes wide open. Voices from beyond the grave came out of me, and from that moment on, Father Cipriano took my case privately. He wasn’t taking anyone privately anymore, but he wanted to follow my case personally for two years. Later, Father Gabriele Amorth and Don Antonio Mattatelli were involved too, but Father Cipriano changed his mind immediately after that first encounter.

Regarding lifting off the ground, there was no levitation in the sense of floating up to the ceiling—we never documented anything like that. However, it happened multiple times that I would be lying flat on the ground, rigid like a wooden board, and I would rise up vertically into a standing position without using my arms or legs at all. Just lifting straight up, exactly like a board tilting up or like how you see the dead rising in horror movies in a cemetery. It was the exact same thing.

There is another incident recounted by the director who followed my life with cameras for seven years. One day, I invited him to an exorcism with Don Antonio Mattatelli. He is a good, sincere churchgoing person. He was there secretly recording, which he wasn’t supposed to do. Today, he maintains with absolute conviction that at one point, he saw the chair I was sitting on rise about 10 to 12 centimeters off the ground. Don Antonio and two other friends were trying to pull me down, literally hanging onto my shoulders, and they were lifted off the ground along with the chair. That is what he saw from his perspective while sitting in the pews. Neither I, nor Don Antonio, nor the third person remember this happening, but spiritually it could have occurred. Because they were touching me, we were all caught up together in the rite of the exorcism, while the director was on the outside. Perhaps the Lord let him see that that day for a specific reason, but we have no memory of it.

Ania, who was occupying your body? Was it the devil himself, a demon, or multiple demons?

No, there were multiple demons. When I was with Father Gabriele Amorth, the demon spoke his name for the first time. He said, “Yes, it’s me, I am Satan, and I am here with an entire apartment building from the abyss.”

By the time we went to Father Gabriele Amorth, a series of very specific, harsh, and significant things had already occurred, so we needed the evaluation of an expert exorcist. Father Cipriano was experienced, but we wanted confirmation from another source. Father Amorth stated that my case was highly complex. In his opinion, I needed to be exorcised every single day. Before he passed away, he actually wrote me a beautiful letter that I still keep. He couldn’t take care of me every day because he was already very elderly, so I continued going to Don Antonio. The exorcisms were performed roughly once a week, sometimes twice a week.”

[The rest can be viewed in the above video]

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