Fr Gabriele Amorth Vatican recognises ‘rogue’ exorcist group
A Vatican-recognised group of exorcists has issued a new handbook for practitioners of the Church’s ritual to combat demonic possession, among other things insisting that authority to perform exorcisms belongs exclusively to priests assigned by their diocesan bishop and no one else.
According to figures from the group, the move comes in response to a perception that there are too many rogue operators, both clerical and lay, who claim to perform exorcisms but who aren’t authorised to do so.
The handbook, or vademecum, was published in May in Italian and is edited by the International Association of Exorcists, a body founded in 1990 by a group of six priests, including Italian Fr Gabriele Amorth, who served from 1986 until his death in 2016 as an exorcist for the Diocese of Rome, and who once said he’d performed over 50,000 exorcisms during the course of his career.
Pope: God’s patiences opens us all to hope
With the parable of the wheat and the weeds, said Pope Francis said at the Sunday Angelus, Jesus “helps us understand God’s patience, opening our hearts to hope”.
In Sunday’s Gospel reading, Jesus tells the parable of the man who plants good wheat in his field. In the night, an enemy sows weeds among the wheat; and when wheat and weeds begin growing together, the farmer’s servants desire to pull out the weeds. The master, though, tells them to wait until the harvest, for fear that they will pull up the wheat with the weeds.
“Between us,” he said, “we can say that even today the soil has been infested by so many herbicides, weed killers, and poisons that do harm to ourselves and the earth.”
In this parable, Pope Francis explains, the master of the field is God, “who only and always sows good seed” and whose “goal is a good harvest”.
The adversary is the devil, “God’s quintessential opponent” who, out of “envy and hostility” seeks to destroy the work of God.
“The devil’s intention is to hinder the work of salvation, to stonewall the kingdom of God through wicked workers, the sowers in scandal,” the Pope said.
Prelate claims Vatican courtship of China won’t affect Taiwan
In comments to media over the weekend, Taipei’s new Archbishop Thomas Chung An-zu said he’s confident that the Vatican’s apparent courtship of China will not have an impact on Taiwan’s relationship with the Holy See.
According to Taiwanese news agency Focus Taiwan, Cardinal Chung, in comments to media before his installation as the new archbishop of Taipei on Saturday, said that while the Vatican is concerned with evangelisation in China, “in my opinion, this will not affect Taiwan-Vatican relations”.
Among other things, he cited his appointment as an indication of how valuable the Vatican’s relationship with Taiwan is.
Currently Taiwan holds diplomatic relations with just 15 countries, the Holy See being its only diplomatic tie in Europe.
For the past seven years the Vatican under Pope Francis has pursued an aggressive courtship with mainland China, most notably by signing a provisional agreement with Beijing on the appointment of bishops in 2018.
Lasting two years, the terms of that agreement were never made public. However, it is known that it’s set to expire in September. The Holy See is currently in negotiations with China about renewing the agreement.