Vatican Satanic Panic

Father Gabriele Amorth, an Italian priest noted as an exorcist, has published a book-length interview entitled (in Italian) Memoirs of an Exorcist. It’s typically lurid fare, and the Italian media is of course lapping it up. Most attention has been given to Amorth’s claim that there are “Satanic cults” operating inside the Vatican, involving priests, monsignors, and cardinals. Panorama quotes him:

Anche in Vaticano ci sono membri di sette sataniche. Sono preti, monsignori e anche cardinali.

We’re also regaled with tales of paranormal phenomena – including Elvis Presley’s spirit guide:

Il sacerdote descrive inoltre case infestate di spiriti, indemoniati che «lievitano» sotto i suoi occhi, messe nere, vergini violentate, talismani e feticci che evocano presenze demoniache. Ma ricorda anche spiriti guida, come quello di Elvis Presley che ha visto trasferirsi su un pranoterapeuta, oppure anime dannate che spingono giovani adolescenti al suicidio.

Amorth is not the first priest to allege Satanism inside the Vatican – although, as with the others, actual evidence is not provided. In the 1990s Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo made the same allegation, and Amorth is described by Panorama as his friend. John Cornwall’s book Powers of Darkness, Powers of Light featured an interview with Milingo:

Now Satanism is at its strongest throughout the world. These are the years of the Devil. Black Masses, and blaspheming God, and Judas priests. Before he died Pope Paul VI knew what he had done [post-Vatican II]. He knew it! He had let Satan free within the Church. He said he could smell the stench of smoke around the sanctuary. He said the truth!

Milingo, of course, has since married a Korean member of the Unification Church and formed an alliance with Rev Sun Myung Moon to develop a schismatic church for married priests; it seems that he also now accepts Unification Church theology. Amorth explains his friend’s fall from grace as due to temptations sent by the devil.

And before Milingo, there was the late Malachi Martin. This 1990 quote has been posted widely on-line:

Most frighteningly for John Paul [II], he had come up against the irremovable presence of a malign strength in his own Vatican and in certain bishops’ chanceries. It was what knowledgeable Churchmen called the ‘superforce.’ Rumors, always difficult to verify, tied its installation to the beginning of Pope Paul VI’s reign in 1963. Indeed Paul had alluded somberly to ‘the smoke of Satan which has entered the Sanctuary’. . . an oblique reference to an enthronement ceremony by Satanists in the Vatican. Besides, the incidence of Satanic pedophilia — rites and practices — was already documented among certain bishops and priests as widely dispersed as Turin, in Italy, and South Carolina, in the United States. The cultic acts of Satanic pedophilia are considered by professionals to be the culmination of the Fallen Archangel’s rites.

This revelation just happened to coincide both with the evangelical-inspired hysteria over Satanic Ritual Abuse, and with increasing public awareness of the reality of catholic priests who were child abusers.

Amorth, Milingo, and Martin have all been moved to feverish excitement by a quote attributed to Pope Paul VI in 1972 (see here for the original; H/T this site), in which the Pope warns darkly of the “Smoke of Satan”. It seems he was referring to the failure to implement liturgical reforms; the idea that he was making an oblique reference to Satanic cults defies common sense. If the Pope believed such a thing was going on, why didn’t he do more to put an end to it? Or, if he wanted it covered up, why make his statement at all? How could such things still be going on forty years later, and still no evidence has come to light?

In 2006, Amorth purported to have discerned “the signature of the Prince of Darkness” in Harry Potter:

By reading Harry Potter a young child will be drawn into magic and from there it is a simple step to Satanism and the Devil.

8 Responses

  1. The secret of the power of the catholic church establishment has been its ability to hide all the dirty practices going on within and outside the church. The catholic church did everything to conceal the facts that children were being abused by the clergy until the United States broke the relationship that allowed this evil act to be concealed for many decades. Soon the can of worms being concealed by the church across Africa will come to light and that will include child abuse by the clergy.

    In Nigeria within the catholic church you have priests who while officiating in a town other than the one where they were born, preach celibacy while maintaining a wife and kids back in another town. It is also a common knowledge that catholic priests sleep with those women who come to them for confession. This is common across Africa where catholicism is said to be growing as well as in Philippines-Asia. This may sound outrageous but it is a fact that can be verified. I don’t know why evidence is always demanded when incidents such as satanism within the catholic church is mentioned. How can one possibly provide such evidence when there are known exorcists who are known to have left the church due to other reasons. Such priests were not sent out due to their exorcisms but due to other misunderstandings with the powers that control the church leadership.

    I know there are those who will come to defend what I have just stated above but to make it more certain, I will like to point out practices in Nigeria where the catholic priests are now raising families of their own openly in complete defiance of the stated celibacy. The reasoning here is that instead of sleeping with other people’s wives while they are making confessions before them, they would rather marry. This is the catholic church that is growing beyond leaps and bounds across Africa. It all goes to confirm that the catholic church is not a Christian religion but one that has got a complete set of ideas and practices that run contrary to the teachings and ideologies of Jesus Christ.

    The church has also been known over the centuries to be a tool in the hands of those that seek to exterminate others. During the second world war, the catholic church effectively worked with the nazis to kill millions. While millions were dying in Biafra, they paid lip service to the sufferings and deaths of millions there. While the Rwandan genocide was going on, the catholic church was well known to have ignored early warnings just like world leaders did. Simply put, the catholic church is a cult that preaches one thing, while doing something else. Most Africans do not understand the dark side of this organization or else, they would have left long time ago.

    Stephen

  2. The quote attributed to Paul VI is quite accurate. The Vatican’s own website shows it here though in Italian:
    http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/homilies/1972/documents/hf_p-vi_hom_19720629_it.html

    This site has a good explanation of the quote:
    http://jimmyakin.typepad.com/defensor_fidei/2006/11/the_smoke_of_sa.html

  3. Considering the condolence letter and the facts expressed within that letter sent by Golda Meir to the Vatican with the passing of Pope Pius XII in 1958, the statement that the Church assisted the Nazis is ignorant and buys into a revisionist attempt to defame the church. Maybe protestants should pay some respect to the Church. It is the oldest occidental tradition and a standard bearer of Christian, western thought and ethic.

    Read the Nicene Creed, look how the Creed came about and why, and then tell me whether the Church is Christian or not after you read the four squares of the noted creed. Additionally, compare this creed with what Paul taught in Romans regarding what is necessary for salvation.

  4. […] to judge and condemn many things from Harry Potter to unnamed Cardinals at the Vatican. He sees a Satanic conspiracy at work in the Church, and many people are quick to believe what he has to say. This is probably […]

  5. http://www.illuminati-news.com/072706a.htm
    The Investigative Journal, January 2006.
    In January, a woman named Svali told an incredible story about being born into the Illuminati and witnessing a young child being sacrificed in the catacombs of the Vatican.

    Her eyewitness testimony was verified by an Italian woman named Maria, who said she suffered through the same type of gruesome ceremony, telling her story to this reporter only weeks before she reportedly took her own life jumping from the Vatican roof in the early 1980’s.

    Having interviewed both women, the details of the Vatican child sacrifice were remarkably similar right down to the detailed description of the room where the ordeal took place, as well as the details about the particulars of the satanic ceremony.

    Details of both stories can be found in the Arctic Beacon archives under a four part series entitled “The Secrets of the Dangerous Illuminati.”

    Although Maria was found dead on the cobblestones of St. Peter’s Square under suspicious circumstances, Svali remains alive, giving an exclusive interview on Greg Szymanski’s radio show, The Investigative Journal, in January 2006.

    • What better way to make sure nobody suspects than to leave a dead body “on the cobblestones of St. Peter’s Square”?

  6. […] oblique reference to an enthronement ceremony by Satanists in the Vatican”. As I discussed here, the whole thing is […]

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