Catholic Church To Launch Exorcism Reality TV Series
Giotto's depiction of St. Francis exorcising demons.
The Catholic Church must be truly desperate in its quest to engage young people — it’s now resorting to creating a low-brow reality TV show in which its priests perform exorcisms. I promise I’m not making this up — here’s the story from Entertainment Weekly:
Discovery Channel is teaming with the Vatican for an unprecedented new series hunting the deadliest catch of all: Demons.
The Exorcist Files will recreate stories of real-life hauntings and demonic possession, based on cases investigated by the Catholic Church. The project includes access into the Vatican’s case files, as well as interviews with the organization’s top exorcists — religious experts who are rarely seen on television.
“The Vatican is an extraordinarily hard place to get access to, but we explained we’re not going to try to tell people what to think,” says Discovery president and GM Clark Bunting.
Bunting says the investigators believe…
Trinidad Schoolgirls Possessed By Devil
The Trinindad & Tobago Guardian reports that the United States may not be the only country in need of more exorcists:
Panic broke out at the Moruga Composite School yesterday as 17 female students fell mysteriously ill and began rolling on the ground, hissing and blabbering in a strange tongue, after suffering bouts of nausea and headaches. Two of the students reportedly tried to throw themselves off a railing and had to be physically restrained, triggering fears of a possible demon attack.
The drama started during the lunch hour in the Form One block and quickly spread to other areas. Form Five student Kern Mollineau, who attends the Lighthouse Tabernacle Church, said he got worried when the girls’ eyes began rolling up in their heads and they began beating up on the ground.
With the assistance of several other students and teachers, the pupils were taken to the multi-purpose hall where some of them…
Catholic Church Seeks Exorcists
Giotto's depiction of St. Francis exorcising demons.
Apparently America is overwhelmed by demons and a Catholic bishop says “each diocese should have its own” exorcist. Facing a shortage, the Church held a special training workshop in Baltimore this past weekend to teach clerics the esoteric rite, reports Reuters:
The church has signed up 56 bishops and 66 priests for the two-day workshop that began on Friday, seeking to boost the small group of just five or six American exorcists that the church currently has on its books.
“There’s this small group of priests who say they get requests from all over the continental U.S.,” Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, was quoted as saying.
“Actually, each diocese should have its own” exorcist, he added.
Paprocki did not say why there was increased demand for exorcisms, which he noted were rarely performed.
While solemnly regarded by the Catholic Church, exorcism is a staple of Hollywood fright films…
Vatican’s Chief Exorcist Publishes His ‘Confessions’
By Lounge Daddy at Dateline Zero:
A new book is out from Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist. The title is Confessions of an Exorcist.
It’s in paperback, and … in French. This is a bummer; but I hope it’s only a temporary bummer. (Of course it’s in Italian as well, titled Memoirs of an Exorcist.)
For now the lucky French have this latest book to go alongside the first two Fr. Amorth titles that record his experiences with, and thoughts on exorcism. Good for them, those jerks.
However, I’ll be anxiously awaiting an English translation. If it sounds like I am committing the sin of envy, it is because I am.
This newest title is in an interview format; which sets it apart from the other two; which are more short essays, stories, and commentary on various points regarding his experience. (As I understand it however, this book is not in a Q&A…
On Satan’s Trail
Richard Owen joins Father Gabriele Amorth on the hunt for Satan and survives to tell the tale, in the Times:
“Are you afraid of the Devil?” The world’s most famous exorcist levels his gaze at me and then smiles.
“No, it is he who is afraid of me. I work in the name of the Lord. Poor Satan.”
Poor Satan?
“Oh yes. The Evil One shouts and makes noises, but we are made in God’s image, we have the Holy Trinity on our side. There is no need to be afraid of the Devil unless we give in to his temptations.”
We are in the infirmary of the Society of St Paul, the order of Father Gabriele Amorth, in the shadow of St Paul’s Basilica, Rome. The Vatican’s chief exorcist was taken to hospital last autumn with a blood infection and is now convalescing — “they found nothing serious”. Perhaps it was the Devil who…
Chief Exorcist Says Devil Is In The Vatican
Didn’t you just know it? From the Times:
Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican”, according to the Holy See’s chief exorcist.
Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon”.
He added: “When one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia.”
He claimed that another example of satanic behaviour was the Vatican “cover-up” over the deaths in 1998 of Alois Estermann, the then commander of the Swiss Guard,…
Jewish Exorcisms And the Occult
Forward has an article on a centuries-old document which provides evidence concerning a little-known phenomenon — Jewish exorcisms:
The ghostly document details the prayers that were performed on Qamar bat Rahmah to try to rid her of the spirit of her dead husband, Nissim ben Bonia. According to the handwritten but well-preserved Hebrew text, the rabbis asked the ghost to “leave this woman, Qamar bat Rahmah, [and forgo] all authority and control that it has over her.”
The document fittingly comes from the abandoned recesses of the Cairo Geniza, a storeroom attached to a Cairo synagogue in which hundreds of thousands of ancient texts were left because of the Jewish prohibition on destroying religious documents.
