Dark Mysteries of the Vatican

CHAPTER 13

The Devil, You Say

“Thank God we have a Pope who has decided to confront the devil head-on.”

So said Father Gabriele Amorth, the official exorcist of the Rome diocese, when he heard a report in 2007 that Pope Benedict XIV would soon undertake a new campaign to combat demonic possession.

An expert on the subject and author of a popular book on exorcism and demonic possession, age seventy-five and a priest for fifty years, Amorth spoke as “the undisputed leader of Rome ’s six exorcists…and honorary president-for-life of the International Association of Exorcists.”

“I speak with the Devil every day,” he said to an interviewer while “grinning like a benevolent gargoyle. ‘I talk to him in Latin. He answers in Italian. I have been wrestling with him, day in day out, for fourteen years.’”

Born in 1925 in “ Modena, northern Italy, the son and grandson of lawyers,” he joined the Italian resistance as a teenager in World War II. “Immediately after the war, he became a member of Italy ’s fledgling Christian Democratic Party. Giulio Andreotti was president of the Young Christian Democrats, Amorth was his deputy. Andreotti went into politics and was seven times prime minister. Amorth, having studied law at university, went into the Church.”

“From the age of fifteen,” he recalled, “I knew it was my true vocation. My speciality was the Madonna. For many years I edited the magazine Madre di Deo (Mother of God)… I knew nothing of exorcism-I had given it no thought-until June 6, 1986, when Cardinal Poletti, the then Vicar of Rome, asked to see me. There was a famous exorcist in Rome then, the only one, Father Candido, but he was not well, and Cardinal Poletti told me I was to be his assistant. I learnt everything from Father Candido. He was my great master. Quickly I realized how much work there was to be done and how few exorcists there were to do it. From that day, I dropped everything and dedicated myself entirely to exorcism.”

In 2008, he said to the website Petrus that a “new Vatican document would call for the designation of exorcists in every Catholic diocese around the world… But Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office, flatly denied the Petrus report. The papal spokesman said, ‘Pope Benedict XVI has no intention of ordering local bishops to bring in garrisons of exorcists to fight demonic possession.’”

Taking note of these conflicting statements, the Catholic World News service reported, “The topic of exorcism commands considerable public interest in Italy, and Father Amorth has frequently generated attention with warnings about the unchecked spread of diabolical influence. In a new course on the topic, being offered by Rome’s pontifical university Regina Apostolorum, Father Paolo Scarafoni warned that while Satanic cults were making inroads in society, and the influence of the devil was real, he reported that most suspected cases of demonic possession could be explained by other factors.”

On January 26, 1999, the Prefect of the Vatican ’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez, had revealed a revised Roman Catholic ritual for driving out demons. Although he stressed that few people were actually possessed by demons, and that “only one in every 5,000 reported cases is an actual demonic possession,” John Paul II reaffirmed that the Devil exists and was at work in the world.

According to the New York Times, Pope John Paul II acted “in an apparent effort to placate liberal Catholics embarrassed by a practice that seems to echo medieval superstition” by urging those performing exorcisms to “take pains to distinguish between possessed people and others suffering from forms of mental or psychological illness.” The Times noted that exorcism is the “ancient practice of driving the Devil from people believed to be possessed. It remains a source of theological debate and in recent years, despite its renewed popularity in the United States and elsewhere, the Church has sought to play down its significance without shaking the foundations of belief in a personal source of evil in the world.”

“In a Latin text titled, De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam (Of Exorcisms and Certain Supplications), the Vatican cautioned that exorcists “first of all, must not consider people to be vexed by demons who are suffering above all from some psychic illness.”…

“By issuing the text, which replaced a 1614 version, the Vatican reaffirmed the existence of the Devil… The eighty-four-page document, which Pope John Paul II approved before he departed for a visit to North America, contained the prayers and rites for driving out devils, but also for cleansing places and things of demonic influence…

“Cardinal Medina Estevez…said genuine possession could be recognized by various criteria, including the use of unknown languages, extraordinary strength and the disclosure of hidden occurrences or events. He also mentioned a ‘vehement aversion to God, the Blessed Virgin, the saints, the cross and sacred images.’ [He] acknowledged that many modern Catholics no longer believed in the Devil, but he called this a ‘serious fault in religious education,’ adding that the existence of the Devil ‘belongs to Catholic faith and doctrine.

“‘Exorcism is based on the faith of the Church,’ said Estevez, ‘which holds that Satan and other evil spirits exist and that their activity consists in diverting human beings from the way of salvation. Catholic doctrine teaches us that the demons are angels who have fallen because of sin, that they are spiritual beings of great intelligence and power, but I would like to stress that the evil influence of the devil and his followers is usually exercised through deceit and confusion. Just as Jesus is the Truth, so the Devil is the liar par excellence. He deceives human beings by making them believe that happiness is found in money, power or carnal desire. He deceives them into thinking that they do not need God, that grace and salvation are unnecessary. He even deceives them by diminishing the sense of sin or even suppressing it altogether, replacing God’s law as the criterion of morality with the habits or conventions of the majority.’”

The Roman Catholic catechism states that “Jesus performed exorcisms and from him the Church has received the power and office of exorcizing. In a simple form, exorcism is performed at the celebration of Baptism. The solemn exorcism, called ‘a major exorcism,’ can be performed only by a priest and with the permission of the bishop. The priest must proceed with prudence, strictly observing the rules established by the Church. Exorcism is directed at the expulsion of demons or to the liberation from demonic possession ‘through the spiritual authority which Jesus entrusted to his Church.’”

In Ephesians 6: 12-13, St. Paul said. “Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore take unto you the armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect.”

In a book published in 2008, The Sistine Secrets, authors Benjamin Blech, a rabbi, and Roy Doliner wrote that when Michelangelo began work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling he embedded messages of “brotherhood, tolerance, and freethinking” in his painting to encourage “fellow travelers” to challenge the “repressive” Church of his time. They wrote, “Driven by the truths he had come to recognize during his years of study in private nontraditional schooling in Florence, truths rooted in his involvement with Judaic texts as well as Kabbalistic training that conflicted with approved Christian doctrine, Michelangelo needed to find a way to let viewers discern what he truly believed. He could not allow the Church to forever silence his soul. And what the Church would not permit him to communicate openly, he ingeniously found a way to convey to those diligent enough to learn his secret language.”

Blech and Doliner contended that what “Michelangelo meant in the angelic representations was to mock his papal patron…[by sneaking Jewish symbols that at the time were] unorthodox heresies into his ostensibly pious portrayals…to fulfill his lifelong ambition to bridge the wisdom of science with the strictures of faith. The authors claimed to have unearthed secrets that were hidden in plain sight for centuries.” “The book’s starting point was that there is not one Christian figure or image out of the hundreds of figures in the entire ceiling of the Papal chapel. They asserted that in defiance of Pope Julius III, Michelangelo…changed the original Christian design to an overwhelmingly Judaic subject. [Vatican experts held that] the ceiling emphasized that the choice of subjects simply presented the ancestors of Jesus and theological antecedents to the triumph of Christianity.”

Elected pope in 1550, Julius III looted the papal coffers to renovate his own mansion in Rome. The Villa Giula, as it is known, became the full-time residence of Julius III and the pope oversaw the construction. “Julius III appointed a teenage boy, [Innocenzo Ciocchi Del Monte,] as his first cardinal. Julius had picked up Innocenzo on the streets of Parma when Innocenzo was aged fifteen and a beggar boy. The Venetian ambassador reported that Innocenzo slept with the pope (Pope Julius III). Julius allowed Innocenzo to become richer than the Medicis. Reportedly, Julius made love with cardinals, pages, and young men he fancied…

“Other famous gay popes included, reportedly, Pope Benedict IX, Pope John XII, Pope Sixtus IV, and Pope Leo X.” Writing in 1525, Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540) recorded that at the beginning of Leo X’s pontificate “most people deemed him very chaste; however, he was afterward discovered to be exceedingly devoted, and every day with less and less shame, to that kind of pleasure that for honor’s sake may not be named.”

Sixtus IV was one of several popes suspected of being homosexual. The basis of this being the diary of Stefano Infessura (1440-1500) who recorded documented episodes and unsubstantiated rumors. This included accusations of Sixtus awarding benefices and bishoprics in return for sexual favors… However, an exception was was Giovanni Sclafenato, who was made a cardinal, according to the papal epitaph on his tomb, for ‘ingenuousness, loyalty and his others gifts of soul and body.’”

Pope Paul III was said to have “murdered relatives, including poisoning his mother and niece, to inherit the family fortune… The most famous anecdote about Paul III’s ruthlessness revolved around a theological dispute between two cardinals and a Polish bishop.” When the argument became tedious, Paul III had all three hacked to death with swords.

Once a man is elected Pope he can only be validly removed from office by resignation or death. There is no impeachment procedure for Popes.

Vatican archives testify that in the centuries after Leo the Great saved Rome from Attila’s sacking Huns, Lucius III instigated the Inquisition; Pope Innocent III “exercised effective political control over all Italy and much of Europe to bring the temporal power of the Papacy to its high-water mark; Leo X…excommunicated Martin Luther and proved incapable of dealing with the Reformation; Alexander VI (a Borgia) practiced simony and nepotism and failed in his master plan to conquer and unify Italy; Pius VII signed a Concordat with Napoleon and restored Catholicism to France; Leo XIII issued an encyclical, Rerum Novarum, that first diagnosed for Roman Catholics the sickness of contemporary society and called on them to cure it-unsuccessfully.”

As one historian notes, the Roman Catholic Church is humanity’s oldest continuing institution, spanning two millennia. For centuries, the church has been happy to operate away from the public eye, but a written record of the Church and most of its papal history can be found in the Vatican’s immense archives, including Clement V’s dissolution of the Knights Templar and the assertion by the director of the Vatican’s observatory that if there are intelligent beings beyond the bounds of Earth, they are, like us, the handiwork of God.

Among the dark secrets that some people believe may be held by the Vatican ’s present ruler are those that set the date for the end of the world as we know it, the fulfillment of the prophesies of the book of Revelations, and the return of Christ.