Aug 30, 2006 / 22:00 pm
Recent stories in the press, based on an erroneous interpretation of the Catholic Church’s teachings on exorcisms and the devil, beg for clarification, says Catholic League president Bill Donohue.
In an Aug. 27 interview with Vatican Radio, Fr. Gabriele Amorth, a Pauline priest who works as an exorcist in the Diocese of Rome, said he was “convinced that the Nazis were all possessed by the devil.” Furthermore, he asserted that the “horrors” committed by Stalin and Hitler also demonstrate “they were possessed by the devil.”
Some online articles, however, interpret Fr. Amorth’s comments to mean that Stalin and Hitler could not be held accountable and should be let off the hook. Some of these articles even joke that if Satan was the only problem, then the Vatican should conduct exorcisms on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il.