On an unseasonably warm October afternoon in the Witch City, America’s unofficial Halloween capital, thousands of people are passing by a lay Catholic street preacher. Some are wearing skin-tight black skeleton costumes, others vampire hoods and makeup, and some look like demons.
Most are revelers, celebrating Halloween a little early. But others have intense looks on their faces, as if this is game day.
The preacher, Anthony Correnti, 35, isn’t in costume. Instead, he’s wearing 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 two-and-a-half-foot-high Sony speaker is a sign with a Divine Mercy image of Jesus and the magic-markered words “He Has Risen.” Below that is another sign, also in red and blue magic marker: “Jesus Miracles.” The speaker is playing contemporary worship music while Correnti talks into the microphone.
“I cannot save you, but Jesus can save you. I cannot 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 with a slight rasp and an understated Boston accent that goes long on the “o” vowel in “Gawwd” (his pronunciation of God).
“You see, why are we out here? Because if you’re in Salem, you know there’s more. You know there’s a supernatural realm, that there’s a King of the supernatural realm,” Correnti said.
Salem, of course, is the site of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, which city officials have been heavily marketing to tourists during the last several decades. Today more than 1 million people visit this city of about 40,000 during the month of October.
Correnti is one of several thousand Catholics in Salem, which nowadays is a mecca for the occult. Since around the early 1970s, self-identified witches and Satanists have flocked to Salem and stayed. Dozens of stores cater to them. Many sell witch accessories. Some even sell a kit meant to de-Catholicize, including a renunciation of baptism.
So what’s it like to be a practicing Catholic in Salem, which has an official witch downtown and a Satanic temple in a former funeral parlor less than a mile away and where self-identified occultists seek converts year-round?
Father Robert Murray, the pastor of a downtown collaborative parish called Mary, Queen of the Apostles, sees the Witch City as both a symbol and a challenge.
“Living as a Catholic in Salem for all this time makes you see how far society has moved away 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 away from Correnti’s perch. It’s a red brick structure, with a soaring tower built in 1895, called Immaculate Conception.
When he became pastor in 2017, he knew what he was getting into.
“When I first got here, I was told that there are more registered witches than registered Catholics,” he said.
From Hawthorne Boulevard, passersby can see through the church’s open doors a large lit-up painting of Mary above the altar as she is described in the Book of Revelation (“a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet, and upon 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 the past seven years or so, the parish has been keeping the church open during afternoons and evenings on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in October — and on weekdays as Halloween approaches.
In October 2023, about 5,000 people visited the church, said Peter Gordon, 55, a parishioner and patent attorney who helps organizer greeters for the church. This year, the numbers are higher: 6,300 people had stopped in as of Oct. 27.
In the middle of the church is a book for people to write prayers in. Intentions included an aunt and grandma with cancer; an uncle with ALS; family problems; depression; anxiety.
Sometimes the church replaces planned destinations.
“There’s people who go on a bus tour, and Salem’s not what they expect,” Gordon said. “There was a woman who was here on a bus tour who literally spent the whole afternoon in here because she didn’t want to be out there.”
“That’s something we’ve said whenever we had the church open: There’s at least one person it’s open for,” Gordon said.
Out there are people dressed as witches, vampires and devils.
“And that part is a little disconcerting,” Father Murray said. “But we have a response to that. We open up the doors of our church. Our Catholic response is that we invite people to come in and find some peace, to sit and rest. We expose the Blessed Eucharist, and we have the opportunity to pray with people, to pray over them, to anoint them, to listen to their confessions, and to be a source of consolation and hope in the midst of the noise outside.”
Hail Mary
For most people who come, downtown Salem in October is like a big outdoor costume party. Musicians, street performers, street vendors and pointed hats and colorful getups give the blocked-off streets a carnival atmosphere.
When Correnti preaches on Essex Street, he tries to keep his message simple, engaging and positive. He doesn’t criticize the people walking by or warn them, but instead praises their costumes and offers them an invitation.
“God is talking to you today. You might have come here to see the witches, but God has intercepted you, and he 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 during the mid-afternoon to speak to the Register.
He said he was raised a churchgoing Catholic in Salem and went to St. John’s Prep in nearby Danvers, but that he never connected with the faith as a child. As a college student at Arizona State, he spent much of his time chasing girls and parties 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 on Boston’s near North Shore, where he experienced an instant conversion. He started going to Mass two or three times a day, and confession once a day, and he went on long fasts. He started street preaching and later became a co-host of Father Tom DiLorenzo’s Catholic radio program in Boston, In Season and Out of Season.
Correnti told the Register he works part time as a waiter at an Italian restaurant in the North End of Boston, but spends most of his time in ministry.
On Saturday, every once in a while, someone came by and thanked him for preaching the Gospel or offered him a fist bump.
That’s what looked like was happening when a man in a grotesque head-to-toe green costume with wings, horns, tail and platform shoes approached from the left and held out his left fist. As Correnti held out his right fist for a bump, the man in the costume opened his hand and thrust out his fingers as if casting a spell, then dipped his hand and raised it again, giving Correnti the middle finger from about six inches away, before doubling over and cackling as he walked.
Correnti never missed a beat.
“My friend,” he said as the man first extended his hand.
And immediately after the middle finger: “Love you, though. 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.
Several minutes after the green-costumed man gave him the finger, a woman in black skin-tight pants, a black shirt with the midriff exposed and black boots came over to Correnti and said she had gone to Catholic school for 10 years.
“I ended up not making my confirmation and leaving the school,” she said.
“God sent you here today,” Correnti responded.
“No, I’m a Satanist,” she replied. “That’s why I came here — specifically for Satan.”
They talked for about 11 minutes. The woman, who identified herself as “almost 30,” had purple tint in her hair and a black and white scarf around her shoulders and glasses on top of her head.
She ran through a litany of objections against the Catholic Church: What about priest sex abusers? 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: “So what are your thoughts on abortion?” she said, at one point describing a fetus as “just a parasite.”
The woman crossed her arms as Correnti answered some of her objections.
He invited her to church.
“Last time I went into a church, it was really hot. I felt like I was burning,” she said.
She criticized Correnti for preaching to people in a public place, “where everyone’s having a good time and may not believe in Jesus … when everyone’s trying to celebrate Halloween and ghosts and fun stuff like … Satan.”
“Come on the winning team. Satan’s defeated,” Correnti said.
“I’m on 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 bent down toward a cellphone being held by a reporter and said, “Goodbye, Live,” thinking (mistakenly) that the conversation was being livestreamed, and departed saying, “Hail Satan.”
Correnti replied: “Hail Mary.”
