Exorcism, Demonic Possession Now Tools in Culture Wars…
Last year, when Wiccans announced a spell circle meant to vex President Donald Trump, Catholic priests responded, seriously and soberly, that the spell had real power and “was not from God.”
http://archive.today/2019.01.03-210239/https://observer.com/2019/01/pope-francis-exorcism-demonic-possession-culture-wars/
Pope Francis is the political and spiritual leader of the Catholic Church, an organization with more than 1.2 billion adherents and substantial real-estate holdings in nearly every country on earth. As such, he wields significant power and influence over both the bodies and minds of (conservatively) millions of people. When the pope acknowledged climate change as both a real and an imminent threat to be confronted with decisive action, as he did in 2015, it meant something. It also means something when someone like Pope Francis openly acknowledges exorcism—that is, demonic possession of a human being’s consciousness (or their soul, if you really want to get metaphysical) and the ability of a priest to dispel the exorcism through ritual—as a real thing and a legitimate pursuit. And he does. This could be a problem.
Under Francis, exorcism and demonic possession have enjoyed a kind of renaissance in modern-day Catholicism. (There is a YouTube video of the pope supposedly performing the trick following a 2013 mass.) More and more Catholics report seeking exorcisms, and as the BBC reported last year, 250 priests from 50 countries traveled to Rome for exorcist training. Francis is encouraging this: in 2017, the pope told priests that “they must not hesitate” to refer their parishioners to exorcists if they experience “genuine spiritual disturbances.” How much of this should you—or anyone, non-Catholic or otherwise—take seriously? That’s up to you, but it appears that satan and exorcism are now a part of our secular culture wars. In the recent past, examples of demonic possession in everyday life have included yoga, Harry Potter and gay marriage, according to one prominent exorcist. And according to an item published in the National Catholic Register last month, gender-neutral clothing and Celine Dion also qualify for the list of demonic “genuine disturbances.”