Chief Exorcist Father Amorth says Devil is in
From
March
10, 2010
Sex
abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that "the Devil
is at work inside the
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, his wife and Corporal Cedric Tornay, a Swiss
Guard, who were all found shot dead. "They covered up everything
immediately," he said. "Here one sees the rot".
A
remarkably swift
Father
Amorth, who has just published Memoirs of an Exorcist, a series of
interviews with the Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti, said that the attempt on
the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981 had been the work of the Devil, as had an
incident last Christmas when a mentally disturbed woman threw herself at Pope
Benedict XVI at the start of Midnight Mass, pulling him to the ground.
Father
José Antonio Fortea Cucurull, a Rome-based exorcist, said that Father Amorth
had "gone well beyond the evidence" in claiming that Satan had
infiltrated the
"Cardinals
might be better or worse, but all have upright intentions and seek the glory of
God," he said. Some
Father
Amorth told La Repubblica that the devil was "pure spirit,
invisible. But he manifests himself with blasphemies and afflictions in the
person he possesses. He can remain hidden, or speak in different languages,
transform himself or appear to be agreeable. At times he makes fun of me."
He
said it sometimes took six or seven of his assistants to to hold down a
possessed person. Those possessed often yelled and screamed and spat out nails
or pieces of glass, which he kept in a bag. "Anything can come out of
their mouths – finger-length pieces of iron, but also rose
petals."
He
said that hoped every diocese would eventually have a resident exorcist. Under
Church Canon Law any priest can perform exorcisms, but in practice they are
carried out by a chosen few trained in the rites.
Father
Amorth was ordained in 1954 and became an official exorcist in 1986. In the
past he has suggested that Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were possessed by the
Devil. He was among
He
approves, however, of the 1973 film The Exorcist, which although
"exaggerated" offered a "substantially exact" picture of
possession.
In
2001 he objected to the introduction of a new version of the exorcism rite,
complaining that it dropped centuries-old prayers and was "a blunt
sword" about which exorcists themselves had not been consulted. The
He
is the president of honour of the Association of Exorcists.