Nun Dies After Convent Exorcism

Romanian, 23, Was Gagged, Tied To Cross, And Left There For 3 Days

(AP)  "Aggravated murder implies intention and committing the crime with intentional sadism," said Aurelian Pavelescu, a lawyer and member of Romania's parliament. "But they believed they were helping the woman, that they were curing her from her pains."

In Cornici's native village of Perieni, about an hour drive from the convent, her relatives demanded justice for the young woman, who they said joined the convent just days before she was admitted to the hospital.

"She was disfigured, she had marks on her hands, her ankles and her stomach," said her aunt, Anisoara Antohi, 29, standing by Cornici's grave, marked with a simple wooden cross with the words "Sister Irina" scribbled on it.

"She was a good girl. It was too cruel, God, much too cruel," her great-uncle, Gheorghe Antohi, 53, said as he burst into tears. Those who allegedly killed her "should all be crucified like her."

In Tanacu, a couple said they met Corogeanu, the monk accused in the case, when he baptized their godson at the convent, a wooden building with a metal roof that overlooks a rolling hill.

"He held a beautiful service," said Petrica Pintilie. "Who knows what happened there?"

The church has closed the convent, and its gates were chained Friday. A nearby sign warns that no men are allowed in after 4 p.m. and that only Orthodox believers who are properly dressed can enter.

"Here we only talk to God and we sing with the angels in silence and with much prayer," says another sign posted on the convent's white fence.

The Orthodox Church has strongly condemned the exorcism ritual in Tanacu as "abominable." It has banned Corogeanu from the priesthood and excluded the four nuns from the church.

Orthodox monasteries and convents have flourished in Romania since the 1989 fall of Nicolae Ceausescu's brutal communist regime, which suppressed religion.

The Tanacu convent was built in 2001 by a private donor and had not yet been sanctified by the church.

Cornici's death and the revelation that Corogeanu was ordained as a priest without having finished his theological studies have prompted the church to impose stricter rules for entering monasteries, including psychological tests.