Fr Arturo Sosa, SJ,
Photo: General Curia of the Jesuits The superior general of the Jesuit order said that the devil is real, after making headlines in August by stating that Satan is a symbol, not a person.
Satan “is the one who stands between God’s plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ, because he has made this irreversible and free decision, and he wants to drag others to reject the merciful God, who prefers to give his life to save instead of to condemn”, Fr Arturo Sosa, SJ, said last week in a meeting with journalists, according to a report from Vida Nueva.
Fr Sosa added that “the power of the devil…obviously still exists as a force that tries to ruin our efforts”.
His comments came amid remarks he offered on the six Jesuits and two employees killed in November 1989 by Salvadoran soldiers at the University of Central America in San Salvador.
On August 21, Fr Sosa told an Italian magazine that the devil “exists as the personification of evil in different structures, but not in persons, because is not a person, is a way of acting evil. He is not a person like a human person. It is a way of evil to be present in human life”.
The Catechism of the Catholic teaches that “Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: ‘The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing’”.