A priest in Scottsdale, Arizona, has established a chapel for the souls in purgatory in part as a consequence of his own experiences with the departed on the "other side."
Father Doug Lorig, a convert from the Episcopalian faith, now pastor of one of the most prominent parishes in the Phoenix area, says the Lord has used a number of extraordinary mystical experiences to instruct him on the deeper devotions of Catholicism.
Those devotions include prayer for purgatorial souls -- something that is not followed in most Protestant and evangelical denominations (where the afterlife has just two destinations: Heaven and hell). The chapel is called the Holy Souls Oratory and has the Blessed Sacrament.
In one case he buried a 17-year-old boy named Tony, who had been involved with drugs and committed suicide. "I prayed for him at every Mass for a year and about a year later went to Queen of Heaven Cemetery for another funeral, of newborn, and parked car at far end of cemetery," says Father Doug. "I then went to the canopy and said prayers and consoled the family and was walking back past all these graves and just stopped because someone was calling my name.
"'Father Doug, Father Doug.'
"And there was nobody there.
"I looked down -- and there was Tony's grave! I happened to be right there. And I had a locution.
"I heard him clearly say to me, 'Father Doug: thank you.'"
Some souls do their purgatory on earth, says the priest; some are earthbound -- tied to a place of sin or grief, something they can not let go. The priest cites one case in which a young girl saw the spirit of another priest who had no mouth; as it turned out, the poor priest had committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth.
The priest has found an effective formula is to have a Mass said for any soul that seems to be disturbing a place and gently telling the soul, "Call to Jesus. Keep saying 'Jesus' over and over, until He comes."