Vatican City, Jan 8, 2011 / 09:24 am
The Vatican's Press Office director Fr. Federico Lombardi has denied claims that there is any official collaboration between the Holy See and the Discovery Channel for a series called “The Exorcist Files.” Publicity for the show was “misleading.”
The network was reputed to be "teaming up with the Vatican" to recreate documented cases of haunting and possession, Inside TV said on Jan. 5. The report included several statements from Discovery Channel president W. Clark Bunting on the difficulty and nature of an apparent agreement with the Vatican.
Bunting claimed that producers were given "access into the Vatican’s case files" and that "the organization’s top exorcists — religious experts who are rarely seen on television" sat for interviews with them.
“The Vatican is an extraordinarily hard place to get access to, but we explained we’re not going to try to tell people what to think," said Bunting.