Body of nun killed in exorcism ritual exhumed

The body of a Romanian nun who died in June during an exorcism ritual was exhumed today for forensic tests, the state news agency reported.

Irina Maricica Cornici, 23, died June 15 at the secluded Holy Trinity convent in the north-east Romanian village of Tanacu after she was tied up for several days without food or water and chained to a cross during the ritual.

The exorcism ritual was led by Daniel Petru Corogeanu, 29, a monk who served as the convent’s priest, and four other nuns.

The five were charged with murder and denying a person’s freedom, and released from jail on July 27 pending trial. No trial date has been set.

Prosecutors and forensic doctors arrived this morning in the village of Perieni, Cornici’s home village, where the nun is buried, the Rompres news agency reported.

Before that, Cornici’s parents mourned at their daughter’s grave and prayed.

“It is good that they exhumed her, maybe this way the truth will come out and those who killed her will pay,” her father, Costica Antohi, was quoted as saying by Rompres.

The exhumation was requested by Corogeanu a few weeks ago, in a bid to prove his innocence, and the General Prosecutor’s Office agreed earlier this month.

“Through this exhumation we hope to find out the real causes of the death,” Rompres quoted the suspects’ lawyer, Maria Ilisei, as saying. “It will be a complex affair to provide all the answers that remained unanswered from the first examination.”

Cornici’s death stunned Romania and prompted the Orthodox Church to promise reforms, including psychological tests for those seeking to enter monasteries.

The church, which has benefited from a religious revival in recent years, condemned the Tanacu ritual as ”abominable” and banned Corogeanu from the priesthood and excluded the four nuns from the church.

In 1999, when the Vatican issued its first new guidelines since 1614 for driving out devils, it urged priests to take modern psychiatry into account in deciding who should be exorcised.