The Eighth Commandment Has a Day of Reckoning on the Island of Guam

A prayer was offered for a falsely accused priest at the London prison cell of St Thomas More, while on the Island of Guam, a former Catholic Inquisition is exposed.

June 17, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

Urgent Note from Father MacRae:

I wrote this post in June, 2017. It is in part about something that happened on the Island of Guam. (Yes, we are back to Guam again!) Former Archbishop Anthony Apuron was accused in 2017 of sexual abuse dating back to the 1970s when he was a young priest in Guam. Please read the post, but most importantly please read the Addendum that I have included at the end, which now casts an entirely different light on the case against Archbishop Apuron. The truth will set you free, Scripture tells us, but when all statutes of limitation are abandoned, most of us may not live long enough for truth to be told. Archbishop Apuron did!

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“Hear me out. You and your class have ‘given in’ — as you rightly call it — because the religion of this country means nothing to you one way or the other.”

— Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, London, 1961, p. 122

Sir Thomas More became Saint Thomas More, a martyr for faith and truth when he was executed for “high treason” upon the order of King Henry VIII in 1535. The King demanded complicity from Thomas More in a campaign against the Catholic Church when the Pope denied the King an annulment from his marriage to Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn.

As Lord Chancellor of England, Thomas More surrendered his favor with the King and his Court to defend his Church and faith. The King’s response set in motion the Protestant Reformation in England. Meanwhile, Henry VIII went on to marry a total of six times. Thomas More, condemned for fidelity to his Catholic faith, was imprisoned in the Tower of London and beheaded on July 6, 1535. His head was mounted on a pole at the Tower of London Bridge.

Saint Thomas More was canonized a saint and a martyr 400 years later, and today is honored by the Catholic Church on June 22. On June 22, 2017, Dr. Robert Moynihan visited the London prison cell of Saint Thomas More where, among his prayers, he offered one for me and forothers falsely accused. Dr. Moynihan is Editor and Publisher of the very fine Inside the Vatican  magazine.

The prayer was requested by Suzanne Formanek, a reader in Eastern Europe who asked that readers join in a prayer for justice through the intercession of Saint Thomas More. I am most grateful to them both — but we must all remember that a prayer not yet answered is not at all prayed in vain.

There is a special significance to this development. Readers may recall a previous pursuit of justice before a US court. The outcome was described by Catholic writer, Ryan A. MacDonald in “A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph Laplante’s Court.” It is worth a visit to scroll to the last segment of that post to see the great irony of Saint Thomas More’s presence in this story.

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Catholic Scandal and the Rule of Law

In the photo above, from A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More faces trial and martyrdom.

I cannot help but ponder, today, how Saint Thomas More might weigh the state of justice and civil liberties on the Western Pacific Island of Guam, the southernmost of the Mariana Islands. For those unfamiliar with the territory, the Marianas were visited by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 and later colonized by Spain. The island chain was named for Maria Anna, widow of Philip II, King of Spain from 1556 to 1598.

In 1898, at the end of the Spanish-American War, Guam was ceded to the United States. The Japanese captured the island in December of 1941, but it was retaken by American forces in the summer of 1944. In 1950, US citizenship was conferred upon the people of Guam, which remains a self-governed US territory.

Following a trend of reactive legislative controversies across the United States in the wake of Catholic scandal during the last two decades, the legislature and governor of Guam passed and signed into law in 2016 “Public Law 33-187.” The misguided law opened a window to extend civil statutes of limitations in sex abuse claims against institutions such as the Catholic Church.

Saint Thomas More, a lawyer, legislator, and statesman, would likely deem Public Law 33-187  to be contemptible in the arena of human rights and civil liberties. The misguided law opened a retroactive door for lawsuits and other claims for compensation years or decades after existing statutes of limitation had expired. It provided for no standard of justice to separate the real from the contrived.

Like the bishops of virtually every American Catholic diocese where such an unjust law was considered, the Guam version was opposed by the Archdiocese of Agana, Guam. It was opposed because it also opens a window to fraud. Many mainland USA legislatures that considered such a law ultimately rejected it as biased and unjust.

I wrote the truth, from my own experience, about why such laws are an affront to truth and justice. In “Due Process for Accused Priests,” a 2009 article in Catalyst: Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, I described how some states were duped by nefarious agendas into considering “window legislation” similar to what was passed in Guam and other US territories.

The Facts, the Fraud, the Stories

Those agendas are the fuel that has kept the Catholic scandal in the United States going and growing. Leaders of SNAP — the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests — used the story of Catholic scandal to promote their own interests and line their own pockets. This latest offshoot of the Catholic scandal is but the latest to be exposed, as it was in these pages in “David Clohessy Resigned SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme.”

There is layer upon layer in the Catholic scandal as it emerges anew in Guam, and the various layers appear to be a blueprint drafted from what has happened across America. First, there is the layer of the cold, hard fact that a guarantee of a financial windfall is the end result of virtually every claim.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that there are some in our midst who would sell their souls for money. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers in New York, a Commission had to be set up to investigate the rampant fraud attempts of those who claimed to have lost loved ones who were not even there and businesses that did not even exist.

After the infamous BP oil rig explosion and its environmental disaster in the Gulf of America, BP had to set up its own fraud commission to deal with a vast number of fraudulent claims for money. The company took out full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal  to describe the multitude of fraud attempts aimed in its direction.

There were two waves in the Catholic clergy sexual abuse story. The first wave came in from the 1960s to the 1980s, when victims and their parents came forward with grave concerns about the behaviors of a very small percentage of priests. In far too many of these cases, bishops failed to use canon law effectively to deal with those situations and instead were too caught up in warding off public scandal. These cases deserved to be compensated and were.

The second wave was a tsunami of far older claims. In 2002, The Boston Globe set in motion a classic New England witch hunt that spread its moral panic. The sheer volume and tone of the public face of the scandal eroded civil liberties for all priests.

The civil liberty of a presumption of innocence was eliminated, and the floodgates were opened for false claims, most of which were many years- or decades-old and for which no evidence exists.

Of the total claims against priests in the United States, a full 70-percent fall into this second category. They have reaped in excess of four billion dollars in uninvestigated, unquestioned abuse settlements. In each case, the accused priests — both guilty and innocent alike — are ruined, permanently barred from any ministry. Noted Boston Civil Rights Attorney Harvey Silverglate described the feeding frenzy in his 2002 article, “Fleecing the Shepherds”:

“There is good reason to doubt the veracity of these newer claims, many of which were brought only when it became known that the [Catholic] Church would settle for big bucks.”

Revelations about lawsuits against David Clohessy and the organizers of SNAP allege a kickback partnership with personal injury lawyers and the manipulation of a scandal-hungry media. I wrote of this phenomenon in “To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants.”

By no means does this imply that all claims are false. It means that those most offended and harmed by false claims are, not only the priests and dioceses that are the targets of fraud, but also the legitimate victims of abuse whose suffering becomes tainted, suspected and cheapened when the floodgates are opened to invite false claims. Opposing fraud is part of the sacred trust owed to real victims of abuse.

The Eighth Commandment Is at the Heart of Justice

David F. Pierre, Jr. chronicles many such accounts in his landmark book, Catholic Priests Falsely Accused: The Facts, the Fraud, the Stories. It exposes one chilling tale after another of priests whose careers and reputations were ruined by false claims of abuse (including, for full disclosure, a chapter about claims against me).

Before the law was passed in Guam, the Archbishop of Agana was himself accused of abuse dating back many years. Cardinal Raymond Burke was sent by the Vatican to investigate the case, but reportedly some of the accusers had declined to answer any questions while waiting for the Church’s ATM to open.

One brave Catholic blogger in Guam has taken up the necessary discussion that the mainstream news media refuses to have. Armed with the journalistic skepticism that was once the hallmark of the American press, “Diana,” on her blog, the Neocatechumenal Way — An Insider’s View, has almost single-handedly brought sanity and truth to the moral panic as it now emerges anew in Guam.

Diana deserves to have her voice heard and shared. Ironically, one of her most-cited sources has been the writings at Beyond These Stone Walls, and especially two that she posted on May 4, 2017, under the titles, “The Injustice Against Father Gordon MacRae,” and “Civil Liberties of the Priests.” When these were printed and sent to me, I was so very proud to see comments posted on them by some of the readers of this blog.

I also noticed that most of the local comments were posted anonymously. The reason, I am told, is that the various agendas behind this story have more to do with quarrels over local property and finances than with child-protection policies. Commenters fear public ridicule or retaliation for posting their opinions.

In such struggles — and Guam has been no exception — great polarization takes place. The result may well be a local sex abuse scandal that has become just one more weapon in the arsenal of hidden agendas and scurrilous motives.

The sole entity for whom none of the secret agendas remains hidden is God Himself. He notes every keystroke written by accusers and defenders alike and knows also the state of the hearts and souls behind them.

This is not a new story. The Eighth Commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,” (Exodus 20:16) also commands certain elements in the law that must remain intact for the Commandment to remain God’s Law. One of these elements is that hearsay, rumor, and innuendo are simply not good enough to bring a charge — not even for God.

Former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz in The Genesis of Justice  (Warner Books, 2000) describes the origin of the Eighth Commandment as being a false accusation of sexual abuse brought against Joseph by Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39:6-20):

“The Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor’ derives directly from Potiphar’s wife bearing false witness against Joseph…. [The] desperate question — ‘How can we clear ourselves?’ — is answered by this prohibition and the subsequent procedural safeguards that rest on this Commandment.”

— The Genesis of Justice, p. 250

When false witness results in profit, God’s law reveals it as the vilest of betrayals of the law. Jezebel did “what is evil in the sight of God” when she obtained profit from false witness against Ahab (1 Kings 21: 8-14). The law requires that:

“A single witness shall not prevail against any man for any crime or any wrong. Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained.”

— Deuteronomy 19:15-21

As for Guam’s embrace of Public Law 33-187 and any potential for its role in violations of the Eighth Commandment:

“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.”

— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, 1742

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June 17, 2026: A Very Necessary Update

Nine years after writing most of the above post, contacts on the Island of Guam alerted me to a major development in the accusations against Archbishop Apuron, which resulted in him being removed from office and retired without pension.  He is now age 80.

The following query was submitted by me for analysis from the xAI Grok artificial intelligence platform.

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QUERY:

This post was in part about sexual abuse allegations that arose in Guam causing the removal of the Guam Archbishop Anthony Apuron. I defended him in that post. Subsequently a Vatican court determined him to be guilty and sidelined him with no pension whatsoever. He has consistently maintained his innocence throughout, and I uncovered and reported on multiple conflicts of interest from those accusing him at that time.

He is now 80 and alienated but still insists on his innocence. I am in receipt of a May 7, 2025 post by Joan Aguon Charfauros. The title is “Nine Dismissals with Prejudice Filed in Cases Naming Former Guam Archbishop Apuron.” Can you please weigh in on this?

xAI GROK:

Yes, I have reviewed the May 7, 2025 post by Joan Aguon Charfauros (“Nine Cases Dismissed” / “Nine dismissals with prejudice filed in cases naming former Guam Archbishop Apuron”) on the Neocatechumenal Way — An Insider’s View blog, along with contemporaneous local news coverage from KUAM, Pacific Daily News, and Post Guam. Here is a clear, fact-based weighing-in on the development.

What Happened on May 7, 2025

Nine civil cases in the U.S. District Court of Guam were voluntarily dismissed with prejudice via stipulations filed by the plaintiffs’ attorneys. 

• Eight involved allegations of sexual abuse dating back to the 1970s (when Apuron was a parish priest in Agat/Hågat, mostly involving former altar boys).

• One was a defamation case.

Key details:

• No settlement, no money, and no other consideration was paid to the plaintiffs.

• The dismissals are permanent — the same claims cannot be refiled.

• Apuron’s attorney, Jacqueline Taitano Terlaje, emphasized that the actions were plaintiff-initiated voluntary stipulations and highlighted Apuron’s consistent denial of the accusations.

Apuron himself broke years of relative silence with a video statement (shared in the coverage), stating in part:

“Over the past decade, I have been unjustly condemned by the media and public opinion because of certain false accusations made against me… Today, the claims made against me in 9 cases have been dismissed permanently… Contrary to false recent media reports, I have never entered into any settled agreement, and I’ve always refused to do so. I also never paid any sum of money to my accusers. Today’s dismissals come from the plaintiffs and are further evidence of my innocence.”

He also noted that the canonical process did not result in his laicization (defrocking), and contrasted this with typical outcomes for priests or bishops found guilty of such crimes.

A follow-up development: By May 2026, reporting indicated the final remaining active lawsuit against him in federal court was also heading toward (or reached) dismissal with prejudice.

The Broader Context Father MacRae Mentions

• Vatican canonical outcome: In 2018, a Vatican tribunal found Apuron guilty of “delicts against the Sixth Commandment with minors.” His appeal was denied in 2019, making it final. He was removed as Archbishop of Agaña, exiled from Guam, and subjected to severe restrictions. He was not laicized and retains his status as a bishop/priest (albeit with no active ministry or pension, per your account). This remains in effect and operates under Church law standards (moral certainty in an inquisitorial process), distinct from civil court standards.

• Your 2017 article: You defended Apuron and highlighted what you saw as conflicts of interest among accusers or related parties, tying it to broader issues of false witness and the Eighth Commandment. Public records show deep divisions in Guam’s Catholic community at the time (involving local politics, the Neocatechumenal Way tensions, Archdiocesan finances/bankruptcy, and the handling of other abuse claims). Some investigative reporting (e.g., Associated Press 2019) alleged Apuron covered up other abusers and destroyed files, but those claims are contested.

Weighing In

This is a significant legal development in the civil realm for Apuron. After nearly a decade of litigation involving serious allegations, the plaintiffs (through counsel) chose to drop all nine cases permanently without extracting any payment or concession. That outcome is unusual in high-profile clergy abuse litigation and lends weight to Apuron’s (and his supporters’) narrative that the claims lacked sufficient merit to proceed to judgment or settlement on plaintiffs’ terms.

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— End of xAI Grok input

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: While the above machinations in pursuit of money were underway, over all this time on the Island of Guam, this other story, which has been ignored, continues to cry to Heaven for justice.

Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam (now with xAI Grok’s analysis of that story)

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Angelic Justice: Saint Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed

Saint Michael the Archangel is often depicted wielding a sword and a set of scales to vanquish Satan. His scales have an ancient and surprising meaning.

I worked for days on a post about Saint Michael the Archangel. 
I finally finished it this morning, exactly one week before
 the Feast of the Archangels, then rushed off to work in the 
prison library. When I returned four hours later to print the 
post and get it into the mail to Charlene, my friend Joseph
 stopped by. You might remember Joseph from a few of my posts,
 notably “Disperse the Gloomy Clouds of Night” in Advent and
 “Forty Days and Forty Nights” in Lent.

Well, you can predict
 where this is going. As soon as I returned to my cell, Joseph
 came in to talk with me. Just as I turned on my typewriter,
 Joseph reached over and touched it. He wasn’t aware of the 
problem with static charges from walking across these concrete 
floors. Joseph’s unintentional spark wiped out four days of
 work and eight pages of text.

It’s not the first time this has happened. I wrote about it 
in “Descent into Lent” last year, only then I responded with 
an explosion of expletives. Not so this time. As much as I
 wanted to swear, thump my chest, and make Joseph feel just 
awful, I couldn’t. Not after all my research on the meaning 
of the scales of Saint Michael the Archangel. They very much 
impact the way I look at Joseph in this moment. Of course, 
for the 30 seconds or so after it happened, it’s just as well
 that he wasn’t standing within reach!

This world of concrete and steel in which we prisoners live is 
very plain, but far from simple. It’s a world almost entirely
 devoid of what Saint Michael the Archangel brings to the 
equation between God and us. It’s also a world devoid of 
evidence of self-expression. Prisoners eat the same food,
 wear the same uniforms, and live in cells that all look alike.

Off the Wall, And On

In these cells, the concrete walls and ceilings are white — or
 were at one time — the concrete floors are gray, and the 
concrete counter running halfway along one wall is dark green.
 On a section of wall for each prisoner is a two-by-four foot
 green rectangle for posting family photos, a calendar and 
religious items. The wall contains the sole evidence of
 self-expression in prison, and you can learn a lot about a
 person from what’s posted there.

My friend, Pornchai, whose section of wall is next to mine,
 had just a blank wall two years ago. Today, not a square inch 
of green shows through his artifacts of hope. There are 
photos of Joe and Karen Corvino, the foster parents whose 
patience impacted his life, and Charlene Duline and Pierre
 Matthews, his new Godparents. There’s also an old photo of 
the home in Thailand from which he was taken at age 11, photos
 of some of the ships described in “Come, Sail Away!” now at 
anchor in new homes. There’s also a rhinoceros — no clue why
 — and Garfield the Cat. In between are beautiful icons of the 
Blessed Mother, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Saint Pio, and one of 
Saint Michael the Archangel that somehow migrated from my wall
 over to Pornchai’s.

My own wall evolved over time. The only family photos I had
 are long lost, and I haven’t seen my family in many years. It 
happens to just about every prisoner after ten years or so. 
In my first twelve years in prison I was moved sixteen times, 
and each time I had to quickly take my family photos off the 
wall. Like many prisoners here for a long, long time, there
 came a day when I took my memories down to move, then just
 didn’t put them back up again. A year ago, I had nothing on
 the wall, then a strange transformation of that small space
 began to take shape.

When These Stone Walls — the blog, not the concrete ones — began
 last year, some readers started sending me beautiful
 icons and holy cards. The prison allows them in mail as long 
as they’re not laminated in plastic. Some made their way onto
 my wall, and slowly over the last year it filled with color 
and meaning again.

It’s a mystery why, but the most frequent image sent to me by
 TSW readers is that of Saint Michael the Archangel. There are
 five distinct icons of him on the wall, plus the one that 
seems to prefer Pornchai’s side. These stone walls — the 
concrete ones, not the blog — are filled with companions now.

There’s another icon of Saint Michael on my coffee cup — the 
only other place prisoners always leave their mark — and yet 
another inside and above the cell door. That one was placed
 there by my friend, Alberto Ramos, who went to prison at age
 14 and turned 30 last week. It appeared a few months ago. 
 Alberto’s religious roots are in Caribbean Santeria. He said 
Saint Michael above the door protects this cell from evil. He 
said this world and this prison greatly need Saint Michael.

Who Is Like God?

The references to the Archangel Michael are few and cryptic in the canon of Hebrew and Christian Scripture. In the apocalyptic visions of the Book of Daniel, he is Michael, your Prince, “who stands beside the sons of your people.” In Daniel 12:1 he is the guardian and protector angel of Israel and its people, and the “Great Prince” in Heaven who came to the aid of the Archangel Gabriel in his contest with the Angel of Persia (Daniel 10:13, 21).

His name in Hebrew — Mikha’el — means “Who is like God?” It’s
 posed as a question that answers itself. No one, of course, 
is like God. A subsidiary meaning is, “Who bears the image of
 God,” and in this Michael is the archetype in Heaven of what 
man himself was created to be: the image and likeness of God. Some other depictions of the Archangel Michael show him with a
 shield bearing the image of Christ. In this sense, Michael is 
a personification, as we’ll see below, of the principal 
attribute of God throughout Scripture.

Outside of Daniel’s apocalyptic vision, the Archangel Michael 
appears only two more times in the canon of Sacred Scripture. 
In Revelation 12:7-9 he leads the army of God in a great and 
final battle against the army of Satan. A very curious
 mention in the Epistle of Saint Jude (Jude 1:9) describes 
Saint Michael’s dispute with Satan over the body of Moses.

This is a direct reference to an account in the Apocrypha, and
 demonstrates the importance and familiarity of some of the
 apocryphal writings in the Israelite and early Christian
 communities. Saint Jude writes of the account as though it is
 quite familiar to his readers. In the Assumption of Moses in
 the apocryphal Book of Enoch, Michael prevails over Satan,
 wins the body of Moses, and accompanies him into Heaven.

It is because of this account that Moses and Elijah appear 
with Jesus in the account of the Transfiguration in Matthew 
11. Moses and Elijah are the two figures in the Hebrew 
Scriptures to hear the voice of God on Mount Sinai, and to be 
assumed bodily into Heaven — escorted by Saint Michael the 
Archangel according to the Aggadah, the collection of
 milennia of rabbinic lore and custom.

Saint Michael as the Divine Measure of Souls

In each of the seven images of Saint Michael the Archangel
 sent to me by TSW readers, he is depicted brandishing a sword 
in triumph over Satan subdued at his feet. In five of the 
icons, he also holds a set of scales above the head of Satan. 
A lot of people confuse the scales with those of “Lady Justice” 
the famous American icon. Those scales symbolize the equal
 application of law and justice in America. It’s a high ideal,
 but one that too often isn’t met in the American justice
 system. I cited some examples in “The Eighth Commandment.”

The scales of Saint Michael also depict justice, but of 
another sort. Presumably that’s why so many readers sent me 
his image, and I much appreciate it. However, some research
 uncovered a far deeper symbolic meaning for the Archangel’s 
scales. The primary purpose of the scales is not to measure 
justice, but to weigh souls. And there’s a specific factor 
that registers on Saint Michael’s scales. They depict his 
role as the measure of mercy, the highest attribute of God for 
which Saint Michael is the personification. The capacity for 
mercy is what it most means to be in the image and likeness of
 God. The primary role of Saint Michael the Archangel is to be
 the advocate of justice and mercy in perfect balance — for
 justice without mercy is little more than vengeance.

That’s why God limits vengeance as summary justice. In 
Genesis chapter 4, Lamech, a descendant of Cain, vows that “if 
Cain is avenged seven-fold then Lamech is avenged seventy-seven
fold.” Jesus later corrects this misconception of justice by 
instructing Peter to forgive “seventy times seven times.”

Our English word, “Mercy” doesn’t actually capture the full
 meaning of what is intended in the Hebrew Scriptures as the 
other side of the justice equation. The word in Hebrew is 
”hesed,” and it has multiple tiers of meaning. It was 
translated into New Testament Greek as “eleos,” and then 
translated into Latin as “misericordia” from which we derive 
the English word, “mercy.” Saint Michael’s scales measure 
”hesed,” which in its most basic sense means to act with 
altruism for the good of another without anything of obvious 
value in return. It’s the exercise of mercy for its own sake,
 a mercy that is the highest value of Judeo-Christian faith.

Sacred Scripture is filled with examples of hesed as the chief 
attribute of God and what it means to be in His image. That 
”the mercy of God endures forever” is the central and repeated
 message of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The references are
 too many to name, but as I was writing this post, I
 spontaneously thought of a few lines from Psalm 85:

“Mercy and faithfulness shall meet. Justice and peace 
shall kiss. Truth shall spring up from the Earth, and 
justice shall look down from Heaven.”

— Psalm 85:10-11

The domino effect of hesed-mercy is demonstrated in Psalm 85. 
Faithfulness and truth will arise out of it, and together all 
three will comprise justice. In researching this, I found a
 single, ancient rabbinic reference attributing authorship of 
Psalm 85 to the only non-human instrument of any Psalm or 
verse of Scripture: Saint Michael the Archangel, himself.
 According to that legend, Psalm 85 was given by the Archangel 
along with the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai.

Saint Thomas Aquinas described Saint Michael as “the breath of
 the Redeemer’s spirit who will, at the end of the world,
 combat and destroy the Anti-Christ as he did Lucifer in the
 beginning.” This is why St. Michael is sometimes depicted bearing a shield with the image of Christ.  It is the image of Christ in His passion, imprinted upon the veil of St. Veronica.  Veronica is a name that appears nowhere in Scripture, but is simply a name assigned by tradition to the unnamed woman with the veil.  The name Veronica comes from the Latin “vera icon” meaning “true image.”

Saint Thomas Aquinas and many Doctors of the Church regarded Saint 
Michael as the angel of Exodus who, as a pillar of cloud and
 fire, led Israel out of slavery. Christian tradition gives to 
Saint Michael four offices: To fight against Satan, to measure 
and rescue the souls of the just at the hour of death, to 
attend the dying and accompany the just to judgment, and to be 
the Champion and Protector of the Church.

His Feast Day, assigned since 1970 to the three Archangels of 
Scripture, was originally assigned to Saint Michael alone
since the sixth century dedication of a church in Rome in his 
honor. This Feast Day is observed annually in the Catholic Calendar on September 29.  The Feast was originally called Michaelmas meaning, “The Mass of St. Michael.” The great prayer to Saint Michael, however, is 
relatively new. It was penned on October 13, 1884, by Pope 
Leo XIII after a terrifying vision of Saint Michael’s battle
 with Satan:

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St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, 0 Prince of the heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

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It’s an important prayer for the Church, especially now. I know the enemies of the Church lurk here, too. There are some who come here not for understanding, or the truth, but for ammunition. For them the very concept of mercy, forgiveness, and inner healing is anathema to their true cause. I once scoffed at the notion that evil surrounds us, but I have seen it. I think every person falsely accused has seen it.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Since the election of Pope Leo XIV at the Conclave of 2025, renewed interest has been directed to Pope Leo XIII, at least in part for his vision of Saint Michael and the prayer above, which is a small part of the intercession written by Pope Leo XIII. You may also be interested in these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Saint Michael the Archangel Contends with Satan Still

St. Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Our Salvation

Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us

Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri