\u2018Wandering Souls\u2019 or Demonic Masquerade? Why This Debate Is Still Stirring Exorcists and Theologians Age-old questions about life, death and the mystery that unites both are considered. Can the boundary between this life and the afterlife ever blur in ways the Church has not fully defined? Each year, All Souls\u2019 Day and the Month of All Souls renew age-old questions about life, death and the mystery that unites both. In popular culture, ghosts are often imagined as spirits trapped between two worlds, wandering among the living. This image differs significantly from the concept of \u201cwandering souls,\u201d who \u2014 according to theologians and exorcists \u2014 are not condemned to roam indefinitely, but may instead be souls in purgatory temporarily permitted by God to seek prayers or express repentance. The topic of wandering souls, which fascinates many online, has become a source of discomfort within the Church, revealing divergent perspectives among exorcists, theologians and bishops. In the field, several exorcists report encountering what they interpret as wandering souls \u2014 entities that appear humble, penitent and pleading for prayer, rather than demonic. Could departed souls, by divine permission, linger for a time on earth during their purification in purgatory? Or does such a claim challenge the immediacy of particular judgment after death? The discussion was reignited in recent months when the International Association of Exorcists (AIE) issued an internal note condemning the theory of \u201cwandering souls,\u201d citing in particular the Spanish exorcist Father Javier Luz\u00f3n Pe\u00f1a and his work Las seis puertas del Enemigo: Experiencias de un exorcista (2017). Leaked to the press in April 2025, the document warned against views deemed incompatible with Catholic doctrine. The Spanish Flashpoint The debate intensified in Spain with the addition of Father Jos\u00e9 Antonio Fortea\u2019s Tratado sobre las almas errantes (2021). Both authors \u2014 experienced exorcists \u2014 suggested that some souls, saved but not fully purified, might temporarily remain near earthly reality to request prayers. Initially welcomed in some Catholic circles, their works later raised serious concern among bishops and theologians, who feared confusion between legitimate intercession prayer for the dead and forbidden forms of spiritism. This so-called wandering-souls theory has been denounced by leading theologians and exorcists \u2014 including Msgr. Rubens Miraglia Zani, a member of the AIE, in Rome \u2014 as theologically untenable. In an interview with the Register, Msgr. Zani recalled that the 1979 \u201cLetter on Some Questions of Eschatology\u201d from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith explicitly rejected the idea of an intermediate condition in which the soul\u2019s destiny remains undecided. He also cited the Praenotanda of the Rite of Exorcism, which instructs exorcists not to believe any possessing spirit claiming to be a deceased person. Echoing St. Thomas Aquinas, he emphasized that demons can imitate the souls of the dead to sow confusion and error and that the Church\u2019s position on this matter rests on Scripture, Tradition and magisterial teaching. \u201cWhoever disagrees on this point,\u201d he insisted, \u201cstands outside the Catholic faith.\u201d Drawing on his experience, Msgr. Zani affirmed that genuine liberation always occurs through Christ\u2019s authority in the sacraments and prayer, never through supposed communication with the dead. In a public response to the AIE, Father Luz\u00f3n Pe\u00f1a firmly rejected these claims, insisting that they overlooked the Church\u2019s broader Tradition, ignored the diocesan imprimatur his book had originally received \u2014 later withdrawn by the Spanish bishops in April 2025 in the wake of the AIE note \u2014 and confused theological hypothesis with heresy. Citing the late Father Gabriele Amorth, co-founder of the AIE, and his book Memoirs of an Exorcist: My Life Fighting Satan, he noted that many veteran exorcists reported encounters with deceased souls whose humility and repentance clearly differed from demonic deception. Father Luz\u00f3n Pe\u00f1a called for the now-Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith to issue an official clarification on this specific matter to prevent confusion within the Church. Two Understandings of Death On the theological side, this thesis of wandering souls is also supported by the Belgian Arnaud Dumouch, founder of the online portal Docteur Ang\u00e9lique, whose YouTube channel gathers more than 100,000 subscribers. In his book Les \u00e2mes du Sh\u00e9ol, he argues that the notion of wandering souls can harmonize with classical theology when properly understood. \u201cThese souls are not ghosts in the pagan sense,\u201d he told the Register, \u201cbut souls who, because not yet ready for individual judgment, remain between this world and the next in the passage that is death. They may manifest themselves to ask for prayers to help them rise.\u201d He added that the Church has never given a definitive teaching on this matter, adding that while scholastic theology (with St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas) generally excludes such a possibility, \u201cit remains only a school of thought in eschatology, not a dogma.\u201d Quoting Benedict XVI\u2019s Spe Salvi (44-45), Dumouch pointed to the late Pope\u2019s reference to an \u201cintermediate state between death and resurrection,\u201d in which the final sentence is not yet pronounced. In those paragraphs, the Pontiff explains that some souls \u201care already being punished or are experiencing a provisional form of bliss\u201d and that this condition \u201ccan involve purification and healing which mature the soul for communion with God.\u201d Dumouch interprets these lines as leaving legitimate theological room for transitional dimension of purification close to earthly reality, consistent with purgatory understood as a passage rather than a place. Contrary to scholasticism, Dumouch distinguishes between medical and theological death, seeing death as a process rather than an instantaneous event. Judgment follows \u2014 immediately and definitively, in accordance with Catholic dogma \u2014 but the passage leading to it may take different experiential forms. He invokes the analogy of the Exodus to illustrate this passage: What was supposed to be a short journey through the desert became a long, purifying journey of 40 years for the Hebrew people before they reached the Promised Land. From France, Father Guy-Emmanuel Cariot, exorcist and rector of the Basilica of Argenteuil (which houses the Holy Tunic), adopts a more cautious stance. Drawing on his own field experience, he told the Register that many people who believe to have received manifestations of deceased relatives are in fact victims of demonic deception. While open to theological debates, he warned that such theories can also be pastorally dangerous. For him, the risk lies in the ambiguity this idea can convey \u2014 implicitly suggesting that one might live far from God throughout life yet still have a chance afterward. \u201cIt is important to recall that it is in this life that we choose God,\u201d he said. \u201cBuilding one\u2019s life on the idea that some kind of postmortem conversion might be possible can be spiritually very risky. If it\u2019s not true \u2014 and Tradition gives no sign that it is \u2014 then it\u2019s lost forever.\u201d The Christian path of communion with the dead, he concluded, lies not in dialogue but through prayer and the Eucharist. This ongoing debate reflects the tension between human longing to better understand the invisible world and the Church\u2019s legitimate prudence in guarding the truth about salvation. After decades of de-Christianization and the resulting loss in catechetical formation, however, many seek meaning in uncertain places, which makes it appropriate for the Church to speak clearly on these mysteries and to provide keys for discernment between genuine mystical experience and forms of spiritual deception. Beyond controversies, the Church firmly teaches that Christian hope rests not on speculation but on communion. Purgatory is not a realm distinct from heaven and hell but a state of purification for souls destined for heaven (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1030). The living pray for the dead, and the dead, purified in love, pray for the living. Together, they belong to the one Communion of Saints \u2014 a single bond of grace and charity that defeats even death. This article was originally published by NCRegister. Receive the most important news from EWTN Vatican via WhatsApp. It has become increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social media. 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