Ozzy Osbourne’s Faith and Final Days: The Real Story

“I do believe in God,” Ozzy Osbourne once told GQ, his voice as gravelly and unmistakable as ever. “But I’ve got my own idea of what he looks like.”

John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne, Black Sabbath’s wild-eyed frontman and the self-styled Prince of Darkness, died July 22, 2025, at his home in Buckinghamshire, England. He was 76, surrounded by family—a far quieter scene than most of his life’s headline moments.

Ozzy was never easy to pin down. He sang about hell and got called a Satanist by many who didn’t realize it was an act, but he prayed before every show. His 1986 tour was even titled “The Ultimate Sin,” and the April 1 Kansas City show at Kemper Arena was filmed and released on VHS video as “The Ultimate Ozzy.”

So, for most of his career, especially in the ’70s and ’80s, Christian groups painted him as the face of devil worship in rock music. The label stuck, whether he liked it or not. “I’ve always believed there’s a God. I don’t worship the devil, I never have,” he told Rolling Stone in 2004. The accusation clearly got under his skin at times. “The biggest misconception is that I’m a Satanist or something. I don’t worship the devil. I never have,” he repeated in later interviews, sometimes with a laugh that belied the pain it caused him, sometimes with a bit of anger.

He bit the head off a bat, then talked about wanting to be a priest as a kid. Somewhere in the middle, he became a legend—the sort people assumed would never really die, just keep staggering on, year after year, in eyeliner and leather.

His popularity surged again later in life in what may be television’s first reality TV show The Osbournes. It aired only on MTV beginning in 2002 and focused on his domestic life. Viewers saw in him an everyday man, facing the same problems many parents face: teen angst, curfews, home repairs and more. He would later say that was the real him, just a dad who can’t find his eye glasses, not the stage theatrics.

Born in Birmingham in 1948, raised by a devout Catholic mother and an Anglican father who kept his distance from church, Osbourne got christened at the local parish and shuffled through Sunday school. For a while, he thought maybe God would want him in the pulpit, not just screaming onstage. “I’m a Christian. I was christened as a Christian,” he told The Guardian in 2014. He wasn’t exactly a model parishioner, but the faith, somehow, stuck around. He even visited the Ark Encounter

Despite the wild reputation, Osbourne often told interviewers that he considered himself a Christian, even if he didn’t always fit people’s expectations of him: “I consider myself a Christian, but I don’t go to church every week,” he told Spin magazine in 1986, “And I often don’t understand the Bible because it’s written in a language I can’t understand.”. He openly said you didn’t have to go to church to be a Christian—a sentiment that resonated with fans who saw something of themselves in Ozzy’s messy, searching faith.

In fact, Christianity—and Jesus himself—were never far from his thoughts. In more private moments, his prayers were plainspoken and sincere according to those who knew him intimately.

But that private faith also crept into his music. Black Sabbath’s “After Forever” warns about hell and talks openly about Christ, a weird twist in a catalog that also includes “Iron Man” and “Paranoid.” Ozzy never cared for the Satanist label, even as it dogged him. In his later years, faith became less of a secret—evangelist Dylan Novak says he gave Ozzy a personalized Bible in 2023. “Ozzy was touched by the Bible with his name on it. He kept it by his bedside, showing it to visitors,” Novak posted on X after the news broke.

Ozzy baffled fans

His spiritual double-life baffled fans, and even Christian writers. “Ozzy’s spiritual journey was surprising, marked by consistent affirmations of belief in God despite his struggles,” Mark Ellis wrote on X. In 2019, as part of “The A&E Channel’s ‘Ozzy and Jack’s World Detour,’ he an his son visited the Ark Encounter. Answers in Genesis said he heard the Gospel on the tour. The show revealed an aging Osbourne.

Ozzy’s body did take a beating over the years—Parkinson’s, a brutal ATV crash, too many falls—but music was the one thing he wouldn’t quit. At his final show, July 5, 2025, back in Birmingham, he sat on a throne, defiant as ever, belting “Crazy Train” in front of 40,000 fans. The voice had lost a little edge, but not the fight. He ended the night, and his storied career, with a simple benediction: “God bless you all” according to a TikTok video. “Survival is my legacy,” he told People Magazine, and you couldn’t really argue with that.

In a recent interview, he focused on what was important at the end of his life–his family. “I hate going shopping with my wife. I feel like stabbing myself in the neck after half an hour,” he joked. “But it’s time for me to spend some time with my grandkids, I don’t want to die in a hotel room somewhere. I want to spend the rest of my life with my family,” he said.

His wife Sharon, their six kids, and a small tribe of grandchildren survive him. So does the music, the weirdness, the whole messy story. In the end, Ozzy Osbourne left a mark that’s impossible to clean up—a little faith, a lot of noise, and proof that even the wildest souls don’t stop searching for something holy. Maybe that’s what made him human, after all.

And the famous bat episode? Osbourne later revealed he thought it was fake.