Priests learn how to take on the devil

ROME — The Roman Catholic Church is facing a shortage you might not have heard about: qualified exorcists.

Yesterday, about 100 priests rose in prayer and sat down to an eight-week study of exorcism and how to distinguish and fight true demonic possession.

The course at Rome's Regina Apostolorum, a prestigious pontifical university, represents the first time a Vatican-sanctioned study at this level has been dedicated to exorcism.

In Italy, the number of official exorcists has soared in the past 20 years to between 300 and 400, church officials say. But they aren't enough to handle the avalanche of requests for help from hundreds of tormented people who believe they are possessed. In the United States, the shortage is more acute.

Only a small percentage of afflicted people are judged to be in need of exorcism, and learning how to tell the difference between demonic infiltration and other psychological or physical traumas is the main goal of the priestly students taking the course at the Regina Apostolorum.

"When you're dealing with a reality like the devil," said the Rev. Clement Machado, 39, of Canada, "you can't just learn the theoretical. You need the pragmatic experience. ... It's such uncharted territory."

Exorcism — the use of prayer to rid a person or place of the devil or demonic spirits — has its roots in early Christianity. It fell out of a favor around the 18th century, after the Enlightenment and advances in science and modern philosophy, but has experienced a revival in the past few decades. The re-emergence is due in part to the current pope's belief that Satan is a real presence in daily life that must be battled.

"The biggest obstacle has been the lack of training of priests and bishops, who haven't felt sufficiently equipped to confront" what the church believes is a rising obsession with satanic cults, witchcraft and the occult, said Giuseppe Ferrari, an academic specializing in social-religious phenomena who lectured by videophone from Bologna.

"Satanism is very much in fashion now," said the Rev. Paulo Scarafoni, rector of the Regina Apostolorum, which is run by the conservative Legionaries of Christ.

The Rev. Gabriele Nanni, an exorcist from Modena, told the priest-students that doctors can be consulted to eliminate physical or psychological causes for a patient's distress. The symptoms of authentic demonic possession, he said, include utter revulsion to holy symbols such as a crucifix or baptismal oils. Sometimes, he said, the patient enters a deep trance.

The cleansing ritual, he told students, must be kept simple, with much prayer and without pride in one's accomplishments.

"An exorcism is tantamount to a miracle, an extraordinary intervention of God," Nanni said. "It's not that we poor men are so powerful to be able to banish the devil. It's that God gives us the power."

There are fewer than a dozen official exorcists at U.S. dioceses, and it is a topic that most U.S. priests seem to avoid.

The Rev. Christopher Barak traveled from his headquarters in Lincoln, Neb., to Rome to attend the course.

Priests in Nebraska have recently faced troubling cases from parishioners, including unexplained noises in homes and sightings of ghostlike figures, he said.

"There are a lot more behaviors and lifestyles that are not of God," he said. "There's a lot of relativism. Whatever goes, goes ... People are not searching for holiness."