Paranormal record / 2005
Tanacu, northeast Romania. June 2005. In a convent not yet sanctified by the church, a 23-year-old novice named Maricica Irina Cornici was chained to a wooden cross and gagged with a towel. Her brother said he had seen the Devil go into her. The nuns said she cursed during prayers and refused holy water. Their priest, Father Daniel Corogeanu, put it plainly. "You can't take the Devil out of people with pills." Days later, she was dead. Doctors saw chain marks on her wrists and ankles and called the police. What followed was a murder charge, a long trial, a Church that defrocked its priest and, years later, the film Beyond the Hills.
Tanacu is a village of about 1,000 people in Vaslui County, in Romania's northeast. In 2001 a private donor built the Holy Trinity convent there. By 2005 it had not yet been sanctified by the church. It was run by Father Daniel Corogeanu, 29, a former local footballer ordained without finishing his theology studies. The diocese had warned him in writing, but he dismissed its canons as "freemasonry."