Rome, Italy, Feb 17, 2005 / 22:00 pm
The idea of Satanic possession has long been a source for movie plots and ghost stories around the campfire, but a new course at the Pontifical Regina Apostolorum University in Rome is training priests to understand and fight this very real source of evil.
With Italian police saying that Satanism is on the rise, and an Italian court preparing to convict eight members of a Satanic sect for their alleged role in three ritual killings, 100 priests gathered on Thursday to commence what is being called the first class of its kind.
Reportedly, many bishops and diocese do not take the idea of Satanic possession seriously enough. People, even theologians, commented one class member, began to think of the devil as just a myth.
The new course will train priests to understand and confront issues of possession and the occult. The wide-ranging lecturers will include exorcists, psychologists, theologians and criminologists.