On an unseasonably warm October afternoon, thousands of people pass by a Catholic street preacher in Witch City, America’s unofficial Halloween capital. Some wear skin-tight black skeleton costumes, others wear vampire hoods and makeup, and some look like demons.

Most people are night owls and celebrate Halloween a little earlier. But others have an intense expression on their faces, as if it were game day.

The preacher Anthony Correnti, 35, is not in costume. Instead, he wears a black T-shirt that says “Need Prayer?” He stands on a granite wall on Essex Street with a microphone in his right hand. Near a black, 2-foot-tall Sony speaker is a sign with a Divine Mercy image of Jesus and the words “He is Resurrected” magically marked. Below that is another sign, also in red and blue magic script: “Jesus Miracles.” The speaker plays contemporary worship music while Correnti speaks into the microphone.

“I can’t save you, but Jesus can save you. I can’t give you a new life, but today Jesus has a new life for you. Today Jesus wants to fill you with God’s power and God’s love. And all you have to do is say ‘yes,'” Correnti says, his voice slightly gravelly and with a subtle Boston accent that’s long on the “o” vowel in “Gawwd” (his pronunciation of God).

“Look, why are we out here? Because when you’re in Salem, you know there’s more. They know that there is a supernatural realm, that there is a king of the supernatural realm,” Correnti said.

Salem, of course, is the site of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, which the city government has marketed heavily to tourists in recent decades. Today, more than 1 million people visit this city of about 40,000 people in October.

Correnti is one of several thousand Catholics in Salem, which is now a mecca for the occult. Since about the early 1970s, self-proclaimed witches and Satanists began flocking to Salem and staying there. Dozens of stores supply them. Many sell witch supplies. Some even sell a de-Catholicization kit, including a waiver of baptism.

So what’s it like to be a practicing Catholic in Salem, where there’s an official witch downtown, a Satanic temple in a former funeral home less than a mile away, and where self-proclaimed occultists search for converts year-round?

Father Robert Murray, pastor of a downtown parish called Mary, Queen of the Apostles, sees the witch city as both a symbol and a challenge.

“When you live in Salem all the time as a Catholic, you realize how far society has moved from Christianity,” Father Murray told the Register, “and what an opportunity we have to bring Jesus to others.”

Open church

Father Murray’s Church is about a four-minute walk from Correnti’s viewpoint. It is a red brick building with a tall tower built in 1895 called the Immaculate Conception.

When he became a pastor in 2017, he knew what he was getting into.

“When I got here I was told there were more registered witches than registered Catholics,” he said.

From Hawthorne Boulevard, passersby can see through the church’s open doors a large illuminated painting above the altar depicting Mary as described in the Book of Revelation (“a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet , and on her head a crown of twelve stars”). In a monstrance on the altar is an illuminated host, which Catholics believe is the Eucharistic body of Jesus Christ.

For about seven years, the congregation has kept the church open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons and evenings in October – and also on weekdays as Halloween approaches.

About 5,000 people attended the church in October 2023, said Peter Gordon, 55, a parishioner and patent attorney who helps organizers welcome the church. This year the numbers are higher: 6,300 people came by by October 27th.

In the middle of the church there is a book in which people can write prayers. Concerns included an aunt and grandma with cancer; an uncle with ALS; family problems; Depression; Fear.

Sometimes church replaces planned goals.

“There are people who take a bus tour and Salem is not what they expect,” Gordon said. “There was a woman who was here on a bus tour and literally spent the entire afternoon here because she didn’t want to be out there.”

“This is what we always said when the church was open: There was at least one person it was open to,” Gordon said.

There are people out there dressed as witches, vampires and devils.

“And that part is a little disturbing,” Father Murray said. “But we have an answer to that. We open the doors of our church. Our Catholic response is that we invite people to come in and find some peace, to sit down and rest. We unveil the Holy Eucharist and have the opportunity to pray with people, pray for them, anoint them, listen to their confessions and be a source of comfort and hope in the midst of the noise outside.”

Hail, Mary

For most visitors, downtown Salem in October is like one big outdoor costume party. Musicians, street performers, street vendors and pointy hats and colorful get-ups give the cordoned-off streets a carnival atmosphere.

When Correnti preaches on Essex Street, he tries to keep his message simple, engaging and positive. He does not criticize the passers-by or warn them, but rather praises their costumes and invites them.

“God is speaking to you today. You may have come here to see the witches, but God has intercepted you and wants to give you Jesus. He wants to give you his only son. He wants to give you a miracle today,” Correnti said.

He took a break from preaching in the afternoon to speak to the Register.

He said he grew up a religious Catholic in Salem and attended St. John’s Prep in nearby Danvers, but never connected with the faith as a child. As a student at Arizona State University, he spent much of his time chasing girls, partying and smoking marijuana.

But as a young adult, he knew he was missing something. In July 2019, a friend invited him to a conference at a Catholic church near North Shore in Boston, where he experienced an immediate conversion. He began going to mass two or three times a day, going to confession once a day and fasting for long periods. He began preaching on the streets and later became co-host of Father Tom DiLorenzo’s Catholic radio show in Boston. In season and out of season.

Correnti told the Register that he works part-time as a waiter at an Italian restaurant in Boston’s North End, but spends most of his time in ministry.

Occasionally on Saturday someone would come by and thank him for preaching the gospel or offer him a fist bump.

This is what it looked like when a man in a grotesque head-to-toe green costume with wings, horns, tail and platform shoes approached him from his left and held out his left fist. As Correnti extended his right fist to jab, the man in the costume opened his hand and extended his fingers as if casting a spell, then lowered his hand and raised it again to give Correnti the middle finger from a distance of about six inches to show. before doubling over and cackling as he walked.

Correnti never missed a beat.

“My friend,” he said as the man held out his hand for the first time.

And right after the middle finger: “But I love you. You’re still on my prayer list.”

During a telephone interview last week, Correnti said he encounters Satanists all the time.

“When they say, ‘Hail, Satan.’ I say, ‘Hail, Mary,'” he said.

If that sounds like a line, it isn’t.

A few minutes after the green-clad man gave him the finger, a woman wearing black skin-tight pants, a black shirt with an exposed waist and black boots approached Correnti and said she had gone to a Catholic school for 10 years.

“I ended up not doing my confirmation and leaving school,” she said.

“God sent you here today,” Correnti replied.

“No, I’m a Satanist,” she replied. “That’s why I came here – specifically because of Satan.”

They talked for about 11 minutes. The woman, who described herself as “almost 30,” had a purple tint in her hair, a black and white scarf around her shoulders and glasses on her head.

She ran through a litany of objections to the Catholic Church: What about priests who abuse sex? How could Mary conceive Jesus? Why were Adam and Eve punished? Why is everyone else affected by their sin? Why did my mother drink herself to death? Why did my client commit suicide?

Then: “What do you think about abortion?” she said, once describing a fetus as “just a parasite.”

The woman crossed her arms as Correnti responded to some of her objections.

He invited her to church.

“The last time I went to church it was really hot. I felt like I was on fire,” she said.

She criticized Correnti for preaching to people in a public place “where everyone is having fun and maybe doesn’t believe in Jesus…while everyone is trying to celebrate Halloween and ghosts and fun things like…Satan.”

“Come, the winning team. “Satan is defeated,” Correnti said.

“I am To the winning team,” she said.

“Oh, Satan lost on the cross,” Correnti said.

“I love Satan so much,” she said.

“He doesn’t love you,” Correnti said.

At the end of the conversation, she leaned over to a cellphone held by a reporter and said, “Goodbye, Live,” thinking (incorrectly) that the conversation was being livestreamed, and left with the words, “Hail.” , Satan.”

Correnti replied, “Hail, Maria.”