You know things are getting bad in this world when the number of exorcisms rose to such heights in Poland that Roman Catholic priests have joined together to launch a new magazine which will focus on helping people to better understand the wiles of Satan.
The AFP is reporting that the 62 page magazine, Egzorcysta, will be published monthly in Poland and sell for $3.10 U.S. dollars. It’s first issue includes articles entitled, “Satan is Real” and “New Age – the Spiritual Vacuum Cleaner.”
“The rise in the number or exorcists from four to more than 120 over the course of 15 years in Poland is telling,” said Father Aleksander Posacki, a professor of philosophy, theology and leading demonologist and exorcist.
He attributes the rise in demonic possessions to be due, in part, to the crumbling of Europe’s Catholic nations and the switch from atheist communism to free market capitalism in 1989.
“It’s indirectly due to changes in the system: capitalism creates more opportunities to do business in the area of occultism. Fortune telling has even been categorised as employment for taxation,” Posacki told AFP. “If people can make money out of it, naturally it grows and its spiritual harm grows too.”
Posacki also serves on an international panel of expert Roman Catholic exorcists and is familiar with what he calls the “helplessness” of psychology and psychiatry when confronted with extreme behaviors that conventional therapies fail to cure.
“Possession comes as a result of committing evil. Stealing, killing and other sins,” he said.
Fellow exorcist Father Andrzej Grefkowicz said “our hands are full” with requests for exorcisms, saying that there is a three-month waiting list in the capital city of Warsaw.
Along with Father Posacki, he also works with psychiatrists in order to avoid mistaking mental illness for possession, he said.
“I’ve invited psychiatrists to meetings when I’ve had doubts about a case and often we’ve both concluded the issue is mental illness, hysteria, not possession,” Father Grefkowicz said.
According to both exorcists, depictions of demonic possession in horror films are accurate.
“It manifests itself in the form of screams, shouting, anger, rage — threats are common,” Posacki said.
“Manifestation in the form or levitation is less common, but does occur and we must speak about it — I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” he added.
