Man Gouges Eyes Out During Sunday Mass

Witnesses concluded that a churchgoer who tore out his eyes during mass Sunday was the result of schizophrenia.

Aldo Bianchini, a 46-year-old English expatriate residing in Tuscany for a number of years, gouged out his own eyes at Sant’Andrea’s Sunday mass in Viareggio, Italy.

Bianchini stood up and began shouting, while banging his head against the floor, according to witnesses.

He then proceeded to tear out both his eyes using his bare hands.

“He would have needed absolutely superhuman strength to pull his own eyes out with his hands,” Dr. Gino Barbacci of the Versilia hospital told Daily Mail.

Doctors attempted to restore Bianchini’s eyesight, but to no avail.

Bianchini told medics he heard a voice that told him to gouge out his eyes.

Bianchini has a history of mental illness and has refused doctors’ orders to take the pills to treat his schizophrenia.

The presiding priest, Lorenzo Tanganelli, told the Daily Mail that he heard a commotion at the back of the church just as he was beginning his sermon.

Tanganelli completed the mass as paramedics were called and Bianchini was treated.

However, Tanganelli said that many people left because they were shocked by the gory spectacle they witnessed.

Bianchini has now been admitted to the psychiatric ward of Versilia Hospital to undergo further mental health examination.

One of the main symptoms of the mental disorder schizophrenia is an inability to tell the difference between real and unreal events.

This is not the first time schizophrenia has been linked to eye gouging.

In 2005, R&B singer Houston gouged out his eye in his London hotel room, apparently after reading the Matthew 5:29 passage:

“And if thy right eye offends thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”

Houston told his bodyguard, Marco Powell, that gouging his eye was the “only way he could kill the devil,” according to MSNBC.

Similarly, in April 2005, 50-year-old Eugene Roman of Miami gouged out his eyes and later the eye of his wife. He was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression.