Archbishop Hartmayer affirmed that Catholics should respond to “this attack on our faith with prayer, penance and prayers of reparation.”

Catholics in Atlanta plan to pray fervently and make reparations before and during an upcoming “black mass,” a sacrilegious event planned by the so-called Satanic Temple for Oct. 25.

Archbishop Gregory Hartmayer of Atlanta urged all Catholics in an Oct. 8 memo to counter the “Satanic Temple’s attack on the faith” through prayers of reparation and repentance, calling the planned Friday event “a blasphemous and obscene reversal of the Catholic Mass.”

The Satanic Temple, which according to its website denies the existence of God and Satan, is a political activist group known for protesting religious symbolism in public spaces and mocking Christianity by offering “unbaptism” and “black masses.” “ organized.

In 2014, a planned “black mass” at Harvard University sparked significant outrage among Catholics, as did another in Oklahoma City the same year.

A direct mockery of the Catholic Mass, a so-called “black mass,” sometimes involves the desecration of the Eucharist stolen from a Catholic church. On the Satanic Temple website, the “black mass” is briefly described as “a celebration of blasphemy that can be an expression of personal freedom and liberty.”

The Atlanta Satanic Temple is selling tickets to the “mass,” scheduled to take place at a venue northeast of downtown.

Archbishop Hartmayer affirmed that Catholics should respond to “this attack on our faith with prayer, penance and prayers of reparation.” He said he has asked every congregation in Atlanta to host a Eucharistic Holy Hour with blessing to honor the actual presence of Christ in the Eucharist, ideally on or before Friday, Oct. 25, at 9 p.m. ET.

“The practitioners are using a consecrated host that they claim to have received illegally from a Catholic church, desecrating it in the most vile way imaginable and sacrificing it to Satan,” the archbishop said.

“This terrible sacrilege is a deliberate attack on the Catholic Mass and the fundamental beliefs of all Christians. It mocks our Lord Jesus Christ, who we Catholics believe is truly present in the form of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist when consecrated by a validly ordained priest.”

“We commend our efforts to the Lord through the loving intercession of Mary, Mother of God,” he concluded.

In recent years, the Satanic Temple has campaigned on abortion and lost the various lawsuits it filed against state pro-life laws in Missouri and Indiana. Last year it also announced the creation of an “After School Satan Club” at an elementary school in Connecticut.

Critics have long suspected that the group is a hoax or that it exists solely to “troll” religious people, although the group strongly denies this.