Pope faces gut checks on anti-Christian persecution and the death penalty | Crux

Interesting how two different news sources present the same event.  So in this Vatican approved or not?

First, despite what you may hear, the course is not a “Vatican school” or “Vatican camp.”

It’s offered by the “Sacerdos Institute,” a program of priestly formation operated by the Legionaries, in partnership with a private Bologna-based foundation called the “Group of Socio-Religious Research and Information” that tracks New Age movements and the occult.

For a bit of context, the Roman calendar is always chock-full of seminars, conferences, mini-courses, etc., offered by orders, lay movements, private foundations, Catholic colleges, activist groups, and so on. Walk into any Roman hotel, any day of the week, and you’ll likely find at least one. Though organizers often try to play up their Vatican contacts, even inviting a Vatican official or two to speak, none of that makes these initiatives Vatican events.

The course on exorcism is a case in point. It carries a loose endorsement from the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy, and a couple of Vatican officials typically make presentations. This year the line-up includes Italian Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican’s court for issues relating to the forgiveness of sins in the Catholic Church.

Yet nobody is required by the Vatican to attend, there’s no Vatican certification at the end, and one cannot assume that every word uttered represents the Vatican’s take on things.

Second, because the Rev. Gabriele Amorth’s name appears on the list of past speakers for the course, it’s a good bet that somebody will seek out the 90-year-old Italian priest for an interview this week on the current state of the Satan-fighting business.

When they do, Amorth likely will be identified as “the pope’s exorcist,” a designation that’s appeared so often in media reports over the years he probably should have it printed on business cards. The only problem is that it’s not true, and never has been.

Amorth is the most famous living exorcist in the Catholic Church. His 1994 memoir, published in English under the title An Exorcist Tells His Story, became an instant classic.

Amorth is adept at recounting possession stories that make your toes curl, so he has become an obligatory reference. For the record, he’s a priest in good standing, honorary president for life of the International Association of Exorcists, and since 1986 has been authorized as an exorcist by the Diocese of Rome. A member of the Pauline order, he worked out of a small office in the order’s headquarters in Rome, receiving people who sought his help 365 days a year.

Yet Amorth is not a Vatican official and does not perform any Vatican-licensed activity. In fact, there may be no one on the planet more critical of the Vatican’s approach to exorcism.

When the Vatican issued a revised version of the ritual for exorcism in 1999, Amorth loudly objected that the rules prevent exorcisms to counteract “evil spells,” such as curses or the evil eye, which he said account for 90 percent of the cases an exorcist faces. The new rules also stipulate that exorcisms should only be conducted when there is “certainty” of demonic possession, when Amorth insists that certainty can only be acquired by performing an exorcism.

In an interview with 30 Giorni magazine, Amorth bitterly complained that he had run into a “wall of refusal and disrespect” when he attempted to change the minds of Vatican officials, and said it was clear to him that the so-called experts who prepared the new ritual “don’t have the least idea of what an exorcism really is.”

To present Amorth as a “Vatican exorcist,” therefore, is not only inaccurate, but in some ways Amorth himself might take offense.

Pope faces gut checks on anti-Christian persecution and the death penalty | Crux