The second, he continued, is “a prayer of command, which is the prayer that only the priest authorized by his bishop directs straight at Satan, or against the demons that are there, exhorting them, adjuring them, commanding them, ordering them, threatening them so that they depart from the person they have subjugated.”
In this way, the devil “is commanded, ordered, above all by proclaiming that victory of Jesus Christ, that battle of Jesus Christ against them, and also reminding them at times of the pain of hell, the punishments to which they are doomed from the creation of the world by their rebellion.”
Is one ritual better than the other?
The Spanish exorcist stressed that “the ritual of 1614 is neither better nor more effective, nor is the ritual of 2000 better or more effective.”
“It’s true that the one from 1614 brought together a tradition that dates back at least to the 12th century of the most effective or most widespread prayers among exorcists in the Middle Ages for the fight against the devil,” he noted.
In the exorcism ritual of 2000, “the threats to the devil, the insults to the devil, have been suppressed, for example, because there were ritual prayers from 1614 that were directly a torrent of insults against the devil.”
“That is, they wanted to remove that part, let’s say, more threatening to the devil, to accentuate the kerygmatic proclamation of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ,” he said.
Torres explained that “if an exorcist uses the ritual of 1614, he is acting correctly and it is effective, and if an exorcist uses the one from the year 2000, he is acting efficaciously and correctly, because the Church has pledged her prayer and her faith in those rituals.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Graduated in Communication Sciences from the Universidad Privada del Norte in Trujillo, Peru. I have been part of the ACI Prensa team for more than 10 years. I have covered Pope Francis' trips to Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Peru. I covered the beatification ceremony of today's Saint Oscar Arnulfo Romero in San Salvador, El Salvador, in 2015. Special envoy for investigation in Honduras in 2016. Head of the ACI Prensa Office in Mexico since 2018.