Pope and the devil: Francis’ fascination with Satan leads to suspicion he performed exorcism

(AP, May 21, 2013)

Vatican City — Pope Francis’ fascination with the devil took on remarkable new twists Tuesday, with a well-known exorcist insisting Francis helped “liberate” a Mexican man possessed by four different demons despite the Vatican’s insistence that no such papal exorcism took place.

The case concerns a 43-year-old husband and father who traveled to Rome from Mexico to attend Francis’ Mass on Sunday in St. Peter’s Square. At the end of the Mass, Francis blessed several wheelchair-bound faithful as he always does, including a man possessed by the devil, according to the priest who brought him, the Rev. Juan Rivas.

Francis laid his hands on the man’s head and recited a prayer. The man heaved deeply a half-dozen times, shook, then slumped in his wheelchair.

The images, broadcast worldwide, prompted the television station of the Italian bishops’ conference to declare that according to several exorcists, there was “no doubt” that Francis either performed an exorcism or a simpler prayer to free the man from the devil.

The Vatican was more cautious. In a statement Tuesday, it said Francis “didn’t intend to perform any exorcism. But as he often does for the sick or suffering, he simply intended to pray for someone who was suffering who was presented to him.”

The Rev. Gabriele Amorth, a leading exorcist for the diocese of Rome, said he performed a lengthy exorcism of his own on the man Tuesday morning and ascertained he was possessed by four separate demons. The case was related to the legalization of abortion in Mexico City, he said.

Amorth told RAI state radio that even a short prayer, without the full rite of exorcism being performed, is in itself a type of exorcism.

“That was a true exorcism,” he said of Francis’ prayer. “Exorcisms aren’t just done according to the rules of the ritual.”

Rivas took the Vatican line, saying it was no exorcism but that Francis merely said a prayer to free the man from the devil.

“Since no one heard what he said, including me who was right there, you can say he did a prayer for liberation but nothing more,” Rivas wrote on his Facebook page, which was confirmed by his religious order, the Legionaries of Christ.

Fueling the speculation that Francis did indeed perform an exorcism is his frequent reference to Satan in his homilies — as well as an apparent surge in demand for exorcisms among the faithful despite the irreverent treatment the rite often receives from Hollywood.

Who can forget the green vomit and the spinning head of the possessed girl in the 1973 cult classic “The Exorcist”?

In his very first homily as pope on March 14, Francis warned cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel the day after he was elected that “he who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.”

He has since mentioned the devil on a handful of occasions, most recently in a May 4 homily when in his morning Mass in the Vatican hotel chapel he spoke of the need for dialogue — except with Satan.

“With the prince of this world you can’t have dialogue: Let this be clear!” he warned.

Experts said Francis’ frequent invocation of the devil is a reflection both of his Jesuit spirituality and his Latin American roots, as well as a reflection of a Catholic Church weakened by secularization.

“The devil’s influence and presence in the world seems to fluctuate in quantity inversely proportionate to the presence of Christian faith,” said the Rev. Robert Gahl, a moral theologian at Rome’s Pontifical Holy Cross University. “So, one would expect an upswing in his malicious activity in the wake of de-Christianization and secularization” in the world and a surge in things like drug use, pornography and superstition.

In recent years, Rome’s pontifical universities have hosted several courses for would-be exorcists on the rite, updated in 1998 and contained in a little red leather-bound booklet. The rite is relatively brief, consisting of blessings with holy water, prayers and an interrogation of the devil in which the exorcist demands to know the devil’s name, how many are present and when they will leave the victim.

Only a priest authorized by a bishop can perform an exorcism, and canon law specifies that the exorcist must be “endowed with piety, knowledge, prudence and integrity of life.”

While belief in the devil is consistent with church teaching, the Holy See does urge prudence, particularly to ensure that the victim isn’t merely psychologically ill.

The Rev. Giulio Maspero, a Rome-based systematic theologian who has witnessed or participated in more than a dozen exorcisms, says he’s fairly certain that Francis’ prayer on Sunday was either a full-fledged exorcism or a more simple prayer to “liberate” the young man from demonic possession.

He noted that the placement of the pope’s hands on the man’s head was the “typical position” for an exorcist to use.

“When you witness something like that — for me it was shocking — I could feel the power of prayer,” he said in a phone interview, speaking of his own previous experiences.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, sought to temper speculation that what occurred was a full-fledged exorcism. While he didn’t deny it outright — he said Francis hadn’t “intended” to perform one — he stressed that the intention of the person praying is quite important.

Late Tuesday, the director of TV2000, the television of the Italian bishops’ conference, went on the air to apologize for the earlier report.

“I don’t want to attribute to him a gesture that he didn’t intend to perform,” said the director, Dino Boffo.

That said, Francis’ actions and attitude toward the devil are not new: As archbishop of Buenos Aires, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio frequently spoke about the devil in our midst.

In the book “Heaven and Earth,” Bergoglio devoted the second chapter to “The Devil” and said in no uncertain terms that he believes in the devil and that Satan’s fruits are “destruction, division, hatred and calumny.”

“Perhaps its greatest success in these times has been to make us think that it doesn’t exist, that everything can be traced to a purely human plan,” he wrote.

Italian newspapers noted that the late Pope John Paul II performed an exorcism in 1982 — near the same spot where Francis prayed over the young disabled man Sunday.

Exorcist Hotline Created By Catholic Church In Milan, More Priests Available To Drive 'Demons' Out

By Lee Spiegel ("Huffington Post," December 3, 2012)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/38628/

Priests in Europe may soon be working overtime in their ageless struggle against the dark forces of evil.

The Catholic diocese of Milan has created a special exorcism hotline and has doubled the number of exorcism-practicing priests.

The BBC reports the number of trained priests has jumped from six to 12 to try and keep up with an apparent increase in calls over the past 15 years from citizens claiming to need the services of an exorcist.

"From the number of calls we receive, the need has doubled," Monsignor Angelo Mascheroni -- the diocese's chief exorcist since 1995 -- told the news website Incrocinews. "We get young and old, men and women, people with different levels of education, from school-leavers to graduates."

A special switchboard has been set up where people can call Monday through Friday between 2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. for all their exorcism needs. Mascheroni said that one priest was reportedly seeing as many as 120 people a day.

"People in need can call and will be able to find a priest in the same area who doesn't have to travel too far," Mascheroni said, according to The Independent.

While the diocese receives up to four calls each day, what exactly are people calling about? Are demons running rampant in and around Milan, necessitating interventions by priests trained in the task of banishing evil from unwilling victims?

Mascheroni suggests that the rise in exorcist calls could have something to do with the number of parents having discipline problems with their children.

"Usually the parents call, concerned about a child who won't go to school or who's taking drugs or rebelling," he said. "In reality, it's not a demon, but when they're 18 years old, young people don't want to be told what to do."

Maybe that's where the phrase "you little devils" originated.

Even with the increased number of exorcism requests and priests available to perform them, Mascheroni cautions against believing that there's any sort of "real diabolical phenomena" behind it all, preferring to blame "mental and psychiatric disorders" for the reported unusual behaviors.

Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's chief exorcist for 25 years, claims involvement with about 70,000 demonic possession cases. That's a lot of alleged bad energy and fodder for bad movies.

Last year, Amorth insisted that sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic church proved that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican," according to the Independent.

Amorth also previously stated that "Practicing yoga is Satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter. In Harry Potter, the Devil acts in a crafty and covert manner, under the guise of extraordinary powers, magic spells and curses."

Mexico religious cult refuses to allow teachers in

By Mark Stevenson ("Associated Press," August 22, 2012)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/37917/

Mexico City, Mexico - Adherents of a religious sect in western Mexico are physically blocking school teachers from entering their walled community, setting up one of the most high-profile confrontations between religious and civil authorities in Mexico since the 1930s.

Local officials in the western state of Michoacan said Wednesday it may be time to call in a large-scale police operation to enforce the right to schooling in a community that has largely ruled itself according to what it considers Biblical guidelines for almost 40 years. The New Jerusalem community prohibits formal schooling, television, radio, modern music, dress and fashion.

"I think the next step is to go in and enforce the rule of law," said Efrain Barrera, spokesman for the township of Turicato, in western Michoacan state, where the sect's walled-off compound is located.

Under Mexican law, grade school education is compulsory, and Mexico's National Human Rights Commission and the Roman Catholic Church said Tuesday that the refusal to allow classes in the town of New Jerusalem is a violation of children's human rights.

They called on the government to break the town's blockade, which has been limited to fistfights but could escalate. Members of the sect recently attacked and destroyed the school building.

"It is surprising that they want to impose beliefs, not a religion, on grade-school children in their formative stage, by taking away the right every child has to attend classes in government-provided education," the Mexican Bishops Council said in a statement.

"The local authorities should intervene and resolve the conflict, which, if it isn't taken care of, could escalate," the council said. "This is an issue that cannot wait, this is the moment to act and defend the rule of law."

The church does not recognize the sect, which was founded in 1973 by a renegade Catholic priest who objected to the abandonment of Latin masses and other modernization moves.

The group has demanded the right to appoint its own teachers, set its own curriculum and mandate robes and headscarves for female pupils, claiming that otherwise the schools would be introducing bad habits into the community. Girls at government schools in Mexico generally wear uniforms, including knee-length plaid skirts.

The group shuns telephones and its leaders were not available for comment on Wednesday.

In July, gangs of sect followers used sledgehammers to destroy three government school buildings in the community, then doused them with gasoline and set fire to the school furniture and computer equipment.

On Monday, when the new school year was scheduled to start, gangs of church supporters, including women dressed in the bright-colored robes and headscarves the sect requires women to wear, engaged in fistfights with residents who wanted their children to go to school at improvised classrooms set up after the school buildings were destroyed. About a dozen government-paid teachers showed up, but were also driven off.

"They are damaging about 250 children," said Barrera. "It is not fair that older people want to reproduce and impose their own ignorance on a new generation."

There have been periodic reports of deaths, threats and beatings inside the compound, where about 5,000 adherents live in brick houses inside medieval-castle-style walls. But no outside authorities have ever been allowed in.

"What we are demanding is to be able to enter and investigate what has been happening, because there have been systematic crimes and violations of the law since 1973, when the community was founded," Barrera said.

The Human Rights Commission said Tuesday it had already sent inspectors to New Jerusalem and demanded the government send police to guard the schoolchildren and classrooms.

The religion was founded by Nabor Cardenas, "Papa Nabor," a defrocked parish priest who said it was based on messages from the Virgin Mary relayed by an illiterate old woman. Together with supposed clairvoyant Agapito Gomez, who channeled voices, orders and predictions from the spirit world, they ordered the building of the compound, along with towers, walls and multiple church buildings.

Members believe it will be the only place on earth spared from an impending Apocalypse, which they had predicted would occur in cataclysmic volcanic eruptions around the 2000 millennium.

Residents of the New Jerusalem compound cannot use many modern conveniences; women are not allowed to wear makeup, and must dress in robes and are referred to as "nuns" or "courtesans." Residents recite Mass in Latin and use old exorcism and baptism rituals long abandoned by the mainstream church.

Religious conflicts, often between evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics, still occur in some parts of rural Mexico, and have sometimes resulted led to thousands of residents being expelled from their towns.

But the last large-scale religious violence occurred in the 1926-1929 Cristero war, when harsh anti-clerical laws sparked an armed uprising by Roman Catholic rebels against Mexico's secular government and tens of thousands of people died.

African Catholic Church tested by scandals and rivals

By Jean-Louis De La Vaissiere (AFP, November 17, 2011)


Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/36535/?&section=occult

Rome, Italy - When he arrives in Africa on Friday, Pope Benedict XVI will be welcomed by a fast-growing Church struggling with sex and corruption scandals and rivalry from evangelical Christians and Voodooism.

The pope will revisit the themes raised during the synod of African bishops in 2009, when he had called for peace, reconciliation and justice.

The continent has the world's fastest growing number of Catholics -- rising by eight million between 2007 and 2008 alone -- and often sends its dynamic priests to work in increasingly deserted churches across the secularised West.

But the African Church is also riddled with scandals, from child abuse to extramarital relations, collusion with those in power, and ill-gotten fortunes.

African priests have also been known on occasion to be involved with practices that do not sit happily with the Catholic Church -- from exorcism or animal sacrifices to Freemasonry.

In Benin alone, two bishops -- including the Archbishop of Cotonou Marcel Honorat Agboton -- have been dismissed for sex and corruption scandals.

Ahead of his three-day visit, Benedict has denounced ritual killings in witchcraft practices -- a widespread problem in Africa where albinos are often singled out.

The pontiff has also asked those involved in conflicts, such as the strife dividing the Ivory Coast since 2002, not to be afraid to shed light on crimes committed.

He recently called for a cessation to violence between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, where radical Salafists rival mainstream Islam.

The Church "does not want to be a substitute for the state, but can -- through its numerous institutions in the education and health sectors -- bring comfort and care," he said.

Rural depopulation and the promotion of an identity beyond ethnic borders in Africa is seen as a chance for the Catholic Church to reinforce its role as "protector of the weak."

It also hopes to become a "new family" for many, stepping into the void left by weakening community structures, said Mario Giro from the Sant'Egidio community -- a Catholic group active in peace-building initiatives in Africa.

According to a Vatican source, the Church feels it has a duty to help Catholics develop a "true conscience" in a region where bad governance abounds.

Competition among religions is fierce in this poverty-struck region.

Many disappointed Catholics have converted to Pentecostalism, which "offers the full package, while the Church only offers a few Hail Marys," said a Beninese religious commentator.

"We need a second evangelism, which would help those baptised not to allow themselves to be attracted by those selling illusions," said Father Ballang, head of the French-speaking African department at the Vatican Radio.

In the meantime the Church is dedicating a lot of its time to improving education and is the main institution engaged in caring for those with AIDS, even though it is officially opposed to the use of condoms.

Benedict's first visit to Africa in 2009 was overshadowed by a controversial comment when he said the distribution of condoms "aggravates" the AIDS crisis and spoke of sexual abstinence as the only solution.

Witnessing 'child witch' exorcism in the DR Congo

By Angus Crawford ("BBC News," March 1, 2012)


Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/36966/?&section=occult

London, England - An "obsession" with witchcraft and sorcery led a couple to brutally murder a 15-year-old boy at a flat in east London.

Eric Bikubi, 28, and his partner Magalie Bamu, aged 29, have been convicted at the Old Bailey of killing Kristy Bamu after accusing him of being a sorcerer who practised witchcraft.

The couple, who live in Newham, acted after accusing Kristy of controlling and adversely influencing a young boy, the jury was told.

They originally came from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where witchcraft is called Kindoki, and exorcisms are carried out in some churches.

In 2010, Unicef reported 20,000 children accused of witchcraft were living on the streets of DR Congo's capital Kinshasa.

In the DR Congo, accusing a child of being possessed is a criminal offence, a law that has been in place for several years.

Kindoki diagnosed

But in 2008 I travelled to Kinshasa to see if it was making any difference and, at that time, the answer was not at all.

Which is why I found myself in one of the city's slums late at night knocking on the door of tin-roofed shack that doubled as a church.

Pastor Tsimba let me in and showed me three children who he had diagnosed as having Kindoki.

The youngest was probably six, the oldest no more than 12. They had been in the church for days, deprived of food and forced to work. Their parents were paying for the privilege.

The only light came from flickering candles and storm lamps. The pastor began to shout and pray.

One by one he brought the children up to the front of the church. He ordered them to lie down and, still shouting and chanting, began slapping their stomachs, one, two, three times. Each harder than the last.

Then he took a candle and poured burning hot wax on them, leaving them grimacing and squirming but making almost no sound. Their eyes were wide and staring.

Finally, as a bizarre conclusion to the ritual, Pastor Tsimba produced a length of pipe and held it hard against their belly buttons.

'Infected meat'

One after another, he made a play of sucking hard on the pipe and in triumph then spat a lump of meat he claimed to have sucked out of them into a bowl.

The meat he claimed had been been fed to them by a witch, infecting them with Kindoki. The children, bewildered and quiet, were now in his words "delivered".

I alerted a social worker to the plight of the children. An extraordinary and dedicated man, he said he would do all he could to help them.

But his unit had not paid him for months, there was no money for petrol or even a bus fare. So he did his work on foot.

He walked miles each day, visiting as many churches as he could, in this sprawling city of nine million people.

Church elder charged with child abuse in exorcism death of autistic boy

By (AFP, August 27, 2003)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/3523/?&place=united-states&section=other-groups

Prosecutors charged a church elder with physical abuse of a child, following the death of an eight-year-old autistic boy during an exorcism ceremony.

Ray Hemphill, who is in police custody, faces a maximum 10 years in prison and a 25,000 dollar fine if convicted on the felony count, according to the Milwaukee county district attorney's office.

The 45-year-old janitor and pastor allegedly suffocated the developmentally disabled boy during a prayer ceremony to rid him of his "demons" at a church on the northwest side of Milwaukee Friday.

According to investigators, Pat Cooper took her son to the airless church on a rundown strip mall late Friday as she had several times before over the previous three weeks.

The boy lay on the floor and Cooper and several other women present held down his arms and legs while Hemphill crouched on the floor next to Cottrell telling the "demons" to leave him.

At one point, the 157-pound (71-kilo) janitor kneeled on Terrance Cottrell's chest, Cooper told police. As the session went on the janitor laid on top of the boy to subdue him.

Cottrell struggled the entire time, and Hemphill physically laid on top of him for about an hour, according to Hemphill's account.

But it wasn't until a sweaty, exhausted Hemphill got up that the group of four adults realised the boy wasn't breathing.

At that point, Cottrell was blue in the face and had urinated on himself, Cooper told police.

The Medical Examiner's concluded that the pressure placed on the young boy's chest prevented him from breathing and that he was denied oxygen. An autopsy gave his cause of death as "mechanical asphyxia due to external chest compression."

Cottrell was diagnosed as autistic at the age of two, according to his mother, who described her son as "disruptive," and said he was being cared for by a local children's development center.

Ray Hemphill, who was ordained as a minister by his brother in the Apostolic Faith Church but had not received any institutional religious training, had apparently dedicated himself to working on Cottrell, according to Tamara Tolefree, one of the women who helped restrain the young black boy.

Hemphill had decided to devote his entire vacation from his job as a janitor to "getting that spirit out of Junior," she said. "(Friday) was to be our last and final time trying that kind of prayer," Tolefree said.

Religion finds fallow fields in Japan today

By Julia Duin ("The Washington Times," December 27, 2002)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/12213/

While former nightclub musician Marre Ishii, 37, whaled away at the piano, a backup six-piece band belted out ear-splitting tunes and about 50 Japanese young people dressed in a variety of punk-style costumes lifted their hands and clapped.

They were at Committed Japan, a youth-oriented church that uses rock music, evangelizes through a nearby cafe and sells its conferences, CDs and books using standard marketing methods.

Unhappy with traditional Japanese churches that average only 35 worshippers per Sunday, Mr. Ishii began his own church in September 1995 with four persons in an apartment. Now Committed Japan oversees a network of small churches and Bible-study groups numbering 170 persons.

"Japanese people are seeking hope," said Mr. Ishii, lounging in the church-owned Kick Back Cafe in a western Tokyo suburb. Those who fail to attain it, he added, may wind up throwing themselves in the path of a commuter train.

His church has an ingredient that is rare in Japan today: religious conviction. Although Japanese marry with native Shinto ceremonies, mourn their dead in Buddhist rites, and some worship as Christians, Muslims or other religions, public discourse is hardly influenced by theocentric concerns.

Mark Mullins, who teaches comparative religion at Sophia University in downtown Tokyo, says most Japanese avoid religion.

"Since the Aum incident, there's been a huge fallout," he said, referring to the March 1995 sarin-gas attack on the Tokyo subway system by adherents of Aum Shinrikyo — an apocalyptic group of Shiva worshippers founded by "Venerated Master Shoko Asahara" (born Chizuo Matsumoto in 1955) — that killed 12 persons and sickened more than 5,000.

"Now religion is connected with violence and considered dangerous. Before the Aum incident, you'd see religious groups handing out materials at the train stations. That has disappeared. There's not a lot of interest in religion, period."

Nobutaka Inoue, a professor of Japanese culture at Kokugakuin University in Tokyo, also faults the Aum incident for dampening interest.

"For the younger generation, religion is a little bit dangerous," he said. "They may believe in God or spiritual beings, but belonging to an actual group is another matter. Young people see religious people as overly concerned with money or involved with scandal."

This is not to say that the Japanese aren't spiritual: Memorials to aborted fetuses at Buddhist temples such as Hase-Kannon temple in Kamakura, dedicated to the goddess of mercy, and Zojo-ji in Tokyo testify that this is a people who believe strongly in the soul and some form of life after death.

"People will drop by the Meiji Shrine on New Year's," said Mr. Mullins, referring to the country's best-known Shinto sanctuary, "but they don't go anywhere where people will know them. You have a growth of anonymous religious behavior in Japan. Japan has always had an eccentric religious environment."

Shinto ("the way of the gods"), the Japan's indigenous religion, dates to prehistoric times and has no founder or scripture. It concerns harvest and fertility, emperor worship and birth ceremonies. State Shinto, a mixture of religion and patriotism, was the force that propelled many to sacrifice their lives for the emperor during World War II.

Confucianism, the next-oldest religion, has been in Japan since 404 A.D. Most followers of this religion took up Buddhism, which came via Korea sometime around 600 A.D.

Christianity was brought to Japan in 1549 by Francis Xavier, founder of the Roman Catholic Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Rivalry with other Catholic missionary groups, and later with Dutch Protestants, for Japanese converts and influence led to restrictions on Christianity in 1612 and a nationwide ban two years later. Japanese Christians were persecuted under the rule of the Tokugawa shoguns and went underground until 1873, when religious sanctions were withdrawn under the Meiji imperial government.

Some 75 percent of Japanese have Buddhist or Shinto altars in their homes and almost 90 percent pay visits to ancestral graves on religious festivals. Two percent or fewer of Japan's 127 million people consider themselves to be Christians.

However, Japanese like to sample Western Christian customs, such as church weddings and black gospel music. According to a 1999 study published by Kokugakuin University, Japanese associate Christmas with the following in descending order: Santa Claus, Christmas trees, presents, cake, parties, Jesus Christ, church ceremonies and Christmas cards.

But Japanese Christian churches are competing head-to-head with Shinto shrines as a place for wedding ceremonies as more people select Western-style weddings.

"This is a big debate in the Christian community," said Mr. Mullins. "Some say the bride and groom should be Christian. Others say this is the first time the Japanese have asked [Christians] for anything. Usually, we have to go out to them."

So do some of the Buddhist variants, such as Soka Gokkai, Mr. Inoue said. "They preach aggressively to strangers," he said. "The proselytizing attitude is quite problematic to the Japanese. They're even more aggressive than the Mormons."

Islam, which is growing in many other countries, Mr. Inoue added, has no more than 2,000 adherents in Japan, where all religions are trying to maintain a connection to the past while adapting to the future.

"Nothing is growing in Japan," he said. Church membership and attendance are "lessening here, but the interest in spirituality is growing."

"People are looking for something for mental healing, to ease the stress here."

If anything, he added, Japanese are more interested in phenomena such as space aliens, UFOs, exorcism and psychic phenomena. "Uri Geller," he said of the self-described psychic, "is popular here."

The Japanese have been vastly affected by globalization, in which "the religious culture has gotten mixed up," the scholar explained. "Japanese culture is changing because of so many foreign elements in it. People are still asking: 'Who am I?'

"Less and less people eat rice in the morning. More drink coffee and eat bread. Our culture is changing, and so is our religious culture. No religion here has a proper attitude toward this situation."

Michael Wenger, dean of Buddhist studies at the San Francisco Zen Center, said religion has to engage the culture to be effective. Buddhism is growing in the United States, he suggested, because of its allure among Americans as a sophisticated religion that encompasses faith and doubt.

"But in Japan, a lot of people think of Buddhism as 'old hat,'" he said. "They think of it as ancestor worship."

Masamaro Ohazaki, spokesman for Tsukiji Hongwanji, a venerable Tokyo temple belonging to the 10 million-member Jodo Shinshu sect of Buddhism, said attendance there is decreasing.

"People today tend to be attracted by prosperity and commercial benefits," he said. "New religions or cults offer that. Buddhism doesn't offer such profits. It focuses more on life after death."

Youth are more attracted to the "new religions," he went on — everything from Scientology and the Jehovah's Witnesses to several hundred variants on Shinto and Buddhism that sprang up in Japan starting in the 19th century.

"Because the new religions have no baggage or history, they can do whatever they want," he said. "Buddhism with its dark, old image has a hard time adopting new measures."

The Japanese brand of Buddhism is almost Hindu-like in its acceptance of multiple gods, said Shoshin Ichishima, a Buddhist professor at Taisho University in Tokyo.

"Even Christianity's God we'll accept," he said. "But the Japanese like the oriental way of thinking. We are more into nature worship. In Japanese, the word 'kami,' for God, means an impersonal force."

That is a major problem faced by Christians, for whom God is addressed as Father. Christian missionaries say that one would never use in prayer among Japanese the casual terms that Westerners use.

"In this culture, you'd never address God on familiar terms, because that is presupposing you are on equal terms with that person," said Marty Shaw, who works in Tokyo for Conservative Baptist International (CBI).

Moreover, historically in Japan, the mother is seen as nurturing, he said, while the father is stern and unapproachable — an image that only began to fade after World War II.

"Even Japanese believers have a difficult time worshipping [the Christian] God, because the expressions are not their own," said Ken Taylor, a missionary with CBI. "Everything in a typical Japanese church — from the music to the architecture — is imported.

"There are high percentages of Japanese converting to Christianity outside the country, but when they come back, they can't find a church like the one they left."

"A lot of Japanese churches are set in a Confucian system, where the elders rule," said Gary Fujino, a Southern Baptist missionary in Tokyo. "These churches are not going to change. Some say the Japanese church is too indigenized."

Observed Mr. Shaw of CBI: "When you enter a traditional church in Japan, it's a time warp. You are walking into a 1940s, 1950s kind of place. The church is irrelevant.

"Christianity attracts here through its weddings and black gospel music, but that is all surface. Missions organizations are quite discouraged. But when the Holy Spirit decides to move, He'll move."

Exorcisms in high demand in Mexico

By ("KENS 5 Eyewitness News," February 6, 2006)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/20349/?&place=mexico

San Antonio, USA - When most people think of an exorcism, the 1970s movie "The Exorcist," or the more-recent movie "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" may come to mind.

Both movies were based on true stories and depict what the Catholic Church recognizes as signs of true diabolical possession: super-human strength, speaking in an unknown language, a strong aversion to holy objects.

However, exorcisms are very real in the Catholic churches just south of the border. With more people going through the process than ever, priests in Mexico are doing their best to keep up with the demand to drive demons from people's souls.

KENS 5 traveled to the country for a rare look into the world of satanic possession — and exorcism.

A young girl screams and growls, then recoils when hit with holy water. "I am the dragon," a man says. "And I want to enter you." A woman begins to foam at the mouth at the sight of a crucifix. Each of these people and their families believe they are possessed by the devil.

Video from a church in Veracruz shows these cases and more. The priest gave permission for camera crews to come in and witness the exorcisms.

The demand for the ritual is increasing around the world, especially in Mexico.

In Mexico City, there are eight priests authorized by the Vatican to perform exorcisms. In contrast, the Archdiocese of San Antonio doesn't have one authorized priest.

Father Rafael Baltazar is one of the official exorcists. Priests from all over Mexico City send their afflicted parishioners to him, and every week he sees people that he believes are under demonic influence.

"Their facial expressions, their screams," he said in Spanish. He said that's how he knows they are possessed, and he's felt and overwhelming evil presence when he commands the devil to leave.

"It makes the hair on my arms stand up," Baltazar said. "It scares me."

So why are so many more people claiming to be possessed?

People have lost their faith in God, and that allows the devil to attack them, said Father Pedro Mendoza, the chief exorcist at the Archdiocese of Mexico. He gets at least 15 calls a day from people requesting an exorcism.

Mendoza also blames witchcraft, faith healing, psychics and magic for opening the door to evil.

"Everything that is magic is from the devil," Mendoza said in Spanish.

Since so many people are demanding exorcisms, Mendoza organized Mexico's first national meeting of exorcists. About 500 people attended to learn how to drive away evil.

The priests in Veracruz mainly deal with minor exorcisms — when the devil is said to be oppressing the soul, but not possessing it. In these cases, the priests use holy water, a crucifix and a prayer of liberation to free the soul.

The Vatican's exorcism guidelines require all those claiming possession to first be examined by a mental health professional.

"I took her to the doctor, then I came here (the church)," said one girl's mother in Spanish. "It doesn't happen anymore."

After months of daily torment, the young girl says the evil presence is gone after this exorcism.

Even if many believe evil forces around them are increasing, they are reassured by their belief that Satan is no match for the power of Christ.

"If I have a strong faith in Jesus Christ, then the devil can do nothing to me," Mendoza said.

While there is no official exorcist in San Antonio, there are 12 in the United States doing battle with the devil, because the Catholic Church believes Satan is very active in the world.

Brazil Leaves Impression on LDS Church

By Peggy Fletcher Stack ("The Salt Lake Tribune," April 5, 2003)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/1279/

A few miles from the sultry beaches of Ipanema and down the mountain from the beckoning Christus statue is a boxy brown adobe church. The two-story LDS Botafogo Ward sits amid high-rise apartments, bars and markets, within view of multi-colored shanties cascading down the hillside. Its believers worship quietly, oblivious to the constant whirring of ceiling fans and the amplified sermon of a Pentecostal preacher across the street.
Upstairs, children are swaying and gesturing to lyrics about temples or going on a mission. Their special clothing for the annual Primary program is uniformly white, but their faces are beige, bronze and ebony.
This is Mormonism Brazilian-style -- a blend of pragmatic theology (how to be good parents, how to get your kids to heaven) stories about visions and pioneers, American cultural traditions (such as sitting upright in folding chairs and listening quietly to sermons) and a well-ordered church structure, sprinkled with the intoxicating ebullience of Latin American spirituality.
And then there is color.
Down through the centuries, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Indian, African and Asian bloodlines crossed and co-mingled endlessly in Brazil. It was this genealogical brew, rather than the American civil rights movement, that helped lift the ban on black men being ordained to the faith's priesthood.
That momentous reversal in 1978 catapulted a Rio executive, Helvecio Martins, into the leadership ranks of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the first black general authority. His son, Marcus, became its first black missionary.
Today, Mormons in Brazil are as abundant as the fruit-bearing trees and blue-winged butterflies in Rio's lush botanical gardens.
They number more than 800,000, more than in any country besides the United States and Mexico. Brazil has 26 LDS missions, more than Germany, Italy and Great Britain combined. One in 10 missionaries is called to this most populous South American nation.
That means nearly every Mormon in Utah -- from LDS First Presidency member James E. Faust, a missionary there in the 1940s, to the cashier at the old Kenji's Japanese restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City -- has some connection to Brazil.
William Grant Bangerter of Alpine even gave three of his children, born when he was mission president in Brasilia, the middle names Rio, Paulo and, yes, Brasilia.
Some, such as Eric Peterson of Ephraim, return again and again as an ongoing vocation and even dragged his parents there for Christmas. Others, such as Brigham Young University librarian Mark Grover, make it the center of their academic career.
The story of the faith's remarkable growth in Brazil is the unfolding tale of Mormonism itself, with its competing needs to push outward across the globe while holding fast to its center. It speaks of the faith's ability to adapt to new environments and diverse cultures, navigating through ever-changing governmental politics and policies. It points to the future.

It started with Germans: Mormon missionaries didn't arrive in Brazil until the mid-1920s, nearly 100 years after the church was founded in upstate New York, Grover explains in his comprehensive 1986 dissertation, Mormonism in Brazil: Religion and Dependency in Latin America.
For the next decade, LDS evangelism was directed exclusively at German immigrants flooding into Brazil after World War I. It was centered in Joinville, a Germany colony about 125 miles south of Sao Paulo. In 1931, the tiny branch of 48 women, 14 men and 18 children built a modest chapel, the first in Brazil.
Soon, though, Nazism was seen as a growing threat, and in August 1942, when German submarines sank three Brazilian ships, the Brazilian government forbade its citizens to speak German even in private meetings. The church called its missionaries back to Utah to sit out the war. After the war, missionaries turned their attention to Portuguese speakers who joined in droves. The Book of Mormon was translated into Portuguese.
But with those converts came the thorny issue of race.
Church policy forbade giving the priesthood to any man with African ancestry, no matter how distant. They could not officiate in the sacrament, preside at meetings, give their children priesthood blessings or enter the temple.
Missionaries were forced to become gate-keepers, trying to determine racial background through facial features or extensive pedigree charts, Grover writes. "They were encouraged to visit with relatives to examine family pictures."
After LDS Church President David O. McKay visited Brazil on his 1954 world tour, he shifted the emphasis to self-reporting. But that caused problems when people doing their own genealogy discovered African roots after having been ordained.
Apostle Spencer W. Kimball's 1965 assignment to oversee the LDS Church in Brazil may have set in motion an inexorable drive toward ending the ban.
Among the most devoted and visible black members was petroleum executive Helvecio Martins. He became the church's spokesman in Rio, giving countless interviews to explain LDS beliefs and doctrines and becoming the most recognizable Mormon in the nation.
After ground was broken in Sao Paulo for Brazil's first temple, several people saw Martins and his wife holding each other and crying in the unfinished sanctuary, Grover wrote.
And Kimball wrote in his journal about "shedding tears when he saw faithful members who would not be able to use the temple," says his son, Edward Kimball, who is completing a second volume of his father's biography.
On June 9, 1978, just months before the Sao Paulo temple was dedicated, Kimball, by then president of the LDS Church, announced that the priesthood would henceforth be open to "all worthy men," regardless of race.
Mormons believe Kimball had received divine revelation.
Says his son: "It's hard to avoid a conclusion that his experience in Brazil as supervisor and his observation of the faithfulness of black members certainly made a profound impression."

Just a slab of hamburger? The ward barbecue on a November evening near the upscale Barre de Juca suburb of Rio seems eerily familiar. The brick meeting house has the look of any Wasatch Front Mormon chapel, with its wood pews, classrooms, kitchen and gym.
Close your eyes and you could be in Bountiful, minus hamburger buns, funeral potatoes or Jell-O.
Instead, it feels like stepping into Trolley Square's Rodizio Grill, with its skewers of steak, fish, pork, chicken and sausage. The Relief Society sister offers water and insists on spraying mosquito repellent on bare arms and legs -- a matter of survival on a hot, humid evening.
Oh, and the kids play soccer, not basketball.
These members are largely doctors, lawyers and businessmen and women. They are attracted to Mormonism for its teachings about eternal families, its vision of God and Jesus, its unique scripture, the Book of Mormon and a contemporary leader whom they believe speaks with God.
But, like many new members from poverty-stricken areas, they also mention the church's social appeals -- friends, a close-knit, welcoming community and a boot-strap theology that promises constant spiritual progress in this life and the next. It helps members live a disciplined, family-oriented lifestyle.
"We were very, very poor," says Reinaldo Barreto, LDS mission president in Rio, whose family joined the church when he was 13. Since then, Barreto and his six brothers all graduated from college, served LDS missions and were married in the temple. They are now financially secure and in LDS leadership positions. "The gospel changed our whole lives, not just spiritually."
Some converts like Mormonism's lay clergy, which gives just about everyone a title and something important to do. It makes people responsible for each other as friends and role models.
Walmir Silva, a member for a half-century, has been a branch president six times, a bishop once and a counselor to the mission president in Rio. He now is a stake patriarch.
Others choose the faith's prohibition on smoking, alcohol, tea and coffee, clearly counter-cultural in a coffee-rich region.
"I got sick when I drank coffee. When I gave it up, I felt better," said Marcelo Alvarengu, who served an LDS mission to Japan and learned Spanish and English from his companions.
One final appeal, perhaps, is the church's connection to the United States. By any standard, Brazil is more pro-American than most other Latin American countries.
"Blond, blue-eyed missionaries are attractive to Latin American young people," says Francisco Jara, a Chilean journalist who is writing a dissertation on Mormons in Latin America. "Many young women fall in love with elders."
That doesn't mean, however, that Brazilian Mormons are mirror images of their U.S. counterparts.
Some even belong to the Workers' Party, which just helped elect the new president, Lula de Silva, says Warner Woodworth, a BYU professor who has done economic development in Brazil for decades. "They are not all conservative Republican Mormons."

On the religious margins: Brazil remains the most Roman Catholic country in the world; the faith claims nearly 80 percent of the nation's nearly 200 million residents.
The Catholic Church lives comfortably with other faiths, unthreatened when its members fold other religious practices into their lives.
The Rev. Edward Cleary can understand why some Catholics are drawn to the intimacy of a Mormon ward.
"Many Catholics, especially in the cities, feel the church is far from them because their parishes are so large," says Cleary, director of Latin American studies at Providence College in Rhode Island. "Sometimes there is one priest for 8,000 members. In some places it might be one to 40,000."
But Brazil's Catholic hierarchy is untroubled by the Mormon "sheep stealing," says Cleary, a Dominican priest who has been going to Brazil since 1967. "The bishops have, by and large, adopted a position of simply trying to take care of their own, by enlivening the experience for the core group of believers."
Mormons are "minor players" in a crowded field that includes mainstream Protestants and Evangelicals to Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses. Many target the poor in the teeming shantytowns known as favelas.
And unlike Pentecostals, who jumped into electoral politics after 1985, the Mormons "are not offering any political challenges to the Catholic Church," Cleary says.
Pentecostalism is by far the most successful movement, enlisting a commanding 20 million members over the past 20 years with a combination of lively worship and the promise of healing broken bones and broken spirits.
Both are clearly evident in the 2,000-seat Universal Church of the Kingdom of God around the corner and down the street from the Botafogo Ward in downtown Rio.
At the end of a guitar- and drum-filled service, ushers in white shirts, ties and dark pants (looking a lot like Mormon missionaries) pass out contribution cards and sell Christian music CDs.
Dozens of believers line up at the front of the air-conditioned auditorium to speak personally to Pastor Isaias, a youngish man wearing a well-cut navy pinstripe suit, pink shirt and black tie adorned with a gold key on a chain. As they wait for just 15 minutes, they see a baptism, a healing blessing and an exorcism of a distraught young woman kneeling, moaning softly and rolling her head, while Isaias' female assistant calls on the dark spirits to leave her body.
"I don't know much about Mormons," Isaias says through an interpreter. "I preach the son of God, Jesus Christ, who died to take the devil away from people."
Most of his members come from African Spiritism, not American groups like Latter-day Saints, he says. "Our people want divine healing. It's evidence of God."

Holding onto the flock: Though the LDS growth rate in Brazil is impressive by U.S. standards, "revolving door" baptisms continue to be a major problem for the church. According to several Brazilian leaders, the LDS activity rate here is between 25 percent and 35 percent. That means for every three or four converts, only one stays.
Silva, an elderly member of the Botafogo Ward, thinks the problem is simple: proximity to the white-groomed sands made famous by Antonia Carlos Jobim in "The Girl From Ipanema."
They are always seductive, he says. "It's one big temptation."
But that's too easy.
Some new members drop out because they don't have bus fare to get to church. Many can't read, including up to 40 percent of Brazilian returned missionaries, according to one church estimate.
Or they feel the church hasn't met their expectations of a job and a new life. The wards and branches sometimes are like dysfunctional families, with overwhelming social needs and too few capable male volunteers to staff the all-male administration. Men make up less than one quarter of the converts and only a small percentage stay active long enough to fill administrative positions.
And many of those who do serve as bishops, stake presidents and area authorities are unusually young, says Marcus Martins, who interviewed nearly 200 church members for his 1995 dissertation, The Oak Tree Revisited: Brazilian LDS Leaders' Insights on the Growth of the Church in Brazil.
The majority of these leaders are between 20 and 40, with little leadership training, Martins says. And they must work hard to connect with the members, many of whom are in a different social class.
Some may be lost to the sheer challenges of geography in a country that is nearly as big as the continental United States. Chapels are far apart and travel on public transportation is arduous.
It takes three days by boat and three days by bus for many northern Brazilians to travel about 1,500 miles to the temple in Campinas, an hour outside of Sao Paulo. With a few days of temple rituals and six more days to get home, many people are forced to take their entire annual vacation to fulfill that obligation.
"Some walk the whole way," says Sadayosi Ichi, the temple president. "It is a big sacrifice."
And that's why some people hang in there, trying to make Mormon values and practices work.
Take food storage, the LDS teaching that members should have a backup of staples for any emergency. In Utah, the church encourages a two-year supply.
But what about poor favelas, where living conditions are spartan at best?
"Home storage is not about money or space, it's about faith," says Jeannie Mingorance, a Sao Paulo Relief Society president who has been featured on the Brazilian version of "Oprah."
Mingorance has an expansive alphabetical, color-coded storage unit that she's been working on for 30 years. Shelf after neatly organized shelf displays such items as heart of palm, rice, beans, chocolate mix, garlic, zip-lock bags, oil, spices, batteries, vitamins, candles, matches, a radio, china and first aid gear. Many items have to be preserved with garlic and dry ice.
"Every time you have rice or beans, take one spoonful and put it in a can," Mingorance tells the poorest women. "It is a joy when you can do it, spoon by spoon, not kilo by kilo."
This is the kind of trust that transforms Mormon converts into true believers.
Erika Gomes, a teen wearing a white T-shirt that reads, "Scooter Babe," strolls confidently to the podium in her tiny LDS branch in Bangu, about an hour's drive from Rio.
Her topic today is charity, she says to a nearly empty chapel.
"People who don't have food or housing, we need to help them," she says. "We need to have compassion for every son and daughter of God."
The mostly women and children in the congregation, who live in what would be extreme poverty in the United States, nod their heads in agreement.
The next speaker is Gomes' mother, Edna Gomes.
"If the prophet is asking us to go to a different country on a mission, do you have the courage to go?" she asks, gazing out at people who may never have been to downtown Rio, let along another country.

Pentecostal Church Lures Latin Americans Away From Catholicism

By Jens Glüsing ("Spiegel," March 1, 2007)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/24377/?&place=south-america

Sao Paulo, Brazil - Pentecostal ministers in Latin America are luring increasing numbers of Roman Catholics away from their faith with modern marketing tactics, including caps and logo T-shirts. The range of religious "services" on offer even extends to exorcisms.

It's Sunday night in Perdizes, a well-heeled section of São Paulo. Hundreds of teenagers are flocking to a service in a former movie theater. The boys are decked out in surfer gear; the girls wear heavy makeup and have squeezed into skimpy crop tops and skintight jeans. Most have a Bible in tow.

A singer in body-hugging black leather pants pumps up the audience with reggae rhythms. The young people tap their feet to the beat. Then the house lights dim, creating the perfect ambiance for a makeout session. Suddenly, the spotlights blaze on. The audience applauds and whistles, as if revving up for a rock concert. Beams of light converge on a short man in jeans: Pastor Rinaldo Pereira.

The 34-year-old preacher throws his arms in the air as he welcomes his congregation and steps behind his altar, a surfboard on trestles. Behind his back, a laptop projects saccharine images of mountain landscapes and sunsets onto the wall. "God wants to see you smile!" the minister bellows into the jammed hall. The towering loudspeakers next to the altar throb. "Jesus! Jesus!" the audience chants.

Welcome to Church Bola de Neve: the "Snowball Church" is one of hundreds of Protestant Pentecostal communities in São Paulo. Some 5,000 faithful attend the service their Pastor "Rina" presides over every Sunday. Most of his congregants are under 30. While their peers are hanging out in shopping malls or pizzerias, the teenagers of Perdizes are in church. "Pastor Rina is hip!" shouts a girl at the entrance.

A former Baptist preacher, Rina took over the hall in Perdizes three years ago, wooing teens with marketing methods he copied from the private sector, and selling fashionable T-shirts and caps sporting his church's logo. On the weekend, he likes to ride the surf off São Paulo. A wily angler of souls, he spent six years learning his trade -- trawling consumer waters in Nestlé's marketing department.

Rina was moved to establish a Protestant Pentecostal community by a "spiritual experience," he says. He held his first service in a surfing supply store for a group of friends. "My generation has a strong yearning for spirituality that the Catholic Church can't satisfy," he explains. "Religion was considered square. So we had to come up with something new."

The Snowball Church targets the young. There is no dress code; the atmosphere is relaxed and informal. "God doesn't care about appearances," says Rina, who sees himself as an entertainer in the service of the Lord. His sermons are punctuated by jokes, and he often hauls believers onstage for impromptu performances. First-rate rock musicians provide the accompaniment. So far the concept has paid off: Rina's church chain now operates 26 branches around the country, including some near Brazil's most beautiful beaches.

The surfing pastor represents a new generation of Protestant preachers. Unlike traditional Pentecostal communities, the focus isn't on the collection plate. Rina raises money selling surf wear -- as well as CDs and DVDs featuring the services' music programs. The Snowball Church is both a religious wellness center and a multimedia temple, catering not to the poor, but to middle-class kids with deep pockets. Sales of Pastor Rina's CDs typically skyrocket to several hundred thousand.

New churches hoping to ride Rina's wave of success are now mushrooming across Brazil; in São Paulo alone, statistics show that new evangelical churches are founded at the rate of one a day. Churches cater to all tastes and budgets: Some offer miracle healings and exorcisms; some woo followers with pop music; others specialize in telemarketing. Like at a salad bar, believers can sample morsels from the spiritual smorgasbord. If they don't like one product, they simply try another.

The Catholic Church has been hit hardest. Hordes of believers from the world's largest Catholic country are defecting to the evangelicals. The archbishop of São Paulo, Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, estimates that the Catholic churches have lost one-third of their members over the past 40 years. Seven out of 10 former Catholics are seeking salvation in a Protestant community.

Roughly 18 percent of Brazilians belong to Protestant churches, and half of all believers in many major cities are now Protestants. "A holy war for people's souls is raging in Brazil," says Regina Novaes, an anthropologist and religious expert. "The Catholic Church has lost touch with the masses."

Whereas the Pentecostal churches -- "a tree with many branches" (Novaes) -- cultivate a direct relationship with God, the Catholics go through an intermediary, the priest. "The Catholics don't provide quick answers to people's needs. The Protestants are more dynamic," Novaes says.

The trend is running rife throughout Latin America, once a Third World bulwark of Roman Catholicism. From Mexico to Argentina, the Church is in retreat. In just a few years, over half the populations of Guatemala and El Salvador are expected to be Protestant.

Rap-metal rhythms resound from a church hall with a corrugated iron roof in the barrio Villa Reconciliación, an impoverished district in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua. A young man is standing at the keyboards, rapping staccato about his brother's death. A long-sleeved shirt hides his tattoos.

Geovany Rodríguez's body is a mass of martial tattoos and scars from knife wounds. The head of a drooling dog on the 29-year-old's bicep testifies to his membership in Los Perros. "The Dogs" -- some 60 teens and young men -- have established a reign of terror in the slums of the Nicaraguan capital. Until six years ago, Geovany was one of the gang's leaders.

He smoked marijuana and snorted cocaine, financing his drug habit and weapons arsenal by robbing buses and stores. He was arrested four times and spent several years in prison. His brother was shot dead by a rival gang, allegedly to avenge the murder of one of its members.

Geovany says he has never killed anyone, but he avoids eye contact as he says it. He's uncomfortable talking about his past. "My life was at a dead end," he says. "I felt empty inside." A preacher from the Pentecostal community Luz del Mundo ("Light of the World") approached the young gangster on the street, took him to a church service and let him sing at the keyboards. Geovany says he sensed a "supernatural power" at that moment.

Now he is a church regular. The preachers have taken him under their wing, employing him to do odd jobs and helping him to develop his musical ability. He has kicked drugs and booze.

During the service, he plays religious rap music. The lyrics describe his conversion to a creyente, as the born-again Christians are called. One day he hopes to become a professional musician.

Like all Pentecostal communities, Luz del Mundo exercises strict control over its members. Six times a week, Pastor Wilmer Espinosa calls the youths to church for services. Whoever doesn't show up gets hunted down at home. "The community exerts more pressure on the individual than the Catholic Church does," says Novaes. People going through personal crises can count on the support system in their congregations.

Luz del Mundo is one of Latin America's largest Pentecostal communities. It is headquartered in Venezuela, but has branches across the entire region. Its leader, Jaime Banks Puertas, a former officer in Venezuela's armed forces, operates radio stations and produces TV shows. He also deploys the Internet as a missionizing tool.

The days of US-led Latin American Pentecostal churches are gone; the influence of fundamentalist born-again Christians has waned. Today's missionaries hail from Brazil, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.

The Brazilians, in particular, currently dominate the Pentecostal market. The Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus ("Universal Church of the Kingdom of God") under the controversial "Bishop" Edir Macedo, and the evangelical poor people's church Assembléia de Deus ("Community of God") maintain branches in Lisbon, London, Berlin and Moscow. In Latin America, Africa and eastern Europe, tens of thousands flock to church services held by Brazilian preachers. Edir Macedo effortlessly filled the Maracanã soccer stadium in Rio de Janeiro with 200,000 followers.

Macedo is locked in a bitter struggle with his arch-rival, Assembléia de Deus, Brazil's largest Pentecostal community. Both churches live off the dízimo, or tithe system, in which pastors twist arms after each culto, pressuring parishioners to cough up cash.

The pastor of Assembléia de Deus brandishes the collection plate during the service in Botafogo, a district of Rio: "If you're able, give 50 reals (€19)!" Helpers rove through the pews, gathering donations. "If you don't have 50 reals, give 20 or 30, or 10 or five!" Nobody wants to look stingy; even the most destitute chip in a real or two.

After the service, Macedo races to his car and on to the next branch. A pastor's job pays well: A recent want ad offered 3,500 reals (€1,300) per month, plus a "company" car. In Brazil, churches are granted special tax exemptions -- raising the incentive for prospective preachers.

Once a lottery ticket salesman in Rio, Macedo is now a multimillionaire with assets including villas in the United States, a yacht and a private plane. His gargantuan churches seat tens of thousands of believers, and their gaudy mishmash of marble and glass has come to dominate the architectural landscape of suburban Brazil.

The faithful don't object to the cupidity of their leaders: wealth in itself is not considered sinful, but rather desirable. "In the Pentecostal communities, anyone can become a pastor," says Novaes. "For most people, a nice car is a status symbol."

In the late 1980s, a highly publicized study by US anthropologist Sheldon Annis concluded that Protestant communities are commercially more successful than their Catholic counterparts. Annis had compared the productivity of the weaving operations in two Indio villages in Guatemala. His findings demonstrated that, compared to the Catholics, the Pentecostals adopted modern production techniques more quickly, were more efficient and more concerned with getting ahead.

"Despite their frequent right-wing political identification today," Annis wrote, "in at least one sense the early Protestant missionaries were grassroots revolutionaries. ... In their eyes, the Church, alcohol, and debt were the instruments of enslavement -- and they, the missionaries, were the liberators."

Pentecostal communities are therefore perceived as churches for social climbers. Instead of promising a better life in paradise, they preach about wealth in the here and now. And offer practical assistance in the battle against alcohol and drugs.

Small wonder, then, that they have been magnets for the poor. The favela Vigário Geral is one of the most dangerous slums in Rio, but boasts 14 Pentecostal communities - and only one Catholic Church. In the city's overcrowded prisons, which are largely controlled by the drug rings, Protestant preachers have turned thousands of criminals into born-again Christians. Numerous gangster bosses and hit men have become men of God. In Rio's favelas, Pentecostal churches and the cocaine mafia co-exist in a state of cozy symbiosis.

It's Friday evening in São João de Meriti, a poor suburb of Rio. A few hundred faithful, among them former drug lords, murderers and thieves, have gathered in the Pentecostal church, Assembléia de Deus dos Últimos Dias. The men are wearing suits and ties; all the women have donned skirts; Pastor Marcos Pereira does not allow them to wear slacks to the service.

Pereira, a beefy man in his mid-40s with a penetrating gaze, is the best-known and most controversial soul-saver in Rio. And he is considered a legend in the favelas: "I have rescued hundreds of boys from torture and death," he boasts. Residents often call him to mediate in disputes between rival drug gangs. Even the toughest fall into line whenever the pastor shows up.

Pereira's services are true spectacles, mega-events showcasing miraculous acts of healing and exorcism. One after another, the members of his flock fall into a trance. The pastor looks his subjects briefly in the eyes, presses his hand to their forehead, and the "possessed" then sink to the floor. "Vanish, demon!" Pereira roars as he prances around the wincing, moaning victims like a whirling dervish. Snapping his fingers, he brings them out of their trance after a few minutes. Even strangers' legs turn to jelly when Pereira gives them his look. The man has hypnotic powers.

Before the pastor discovered his "spiritual vocation," he waited tables in Copacabana. "I drank and went whoring," Pereira says. "My life was a mess." His "spiritual enlightenment" occurred on a bus; shortly afterward he joined an evangelical church. Word of his talents as a hypnotist soon spread. Today his services attract even politicians and celebrities.

Pereira's efforts have earned him countless "donations," and he has amassed a huge fortune. Now the miracle minister is looking to expand abroad. He recently traveled to Europe and has also made inroads in the United States. "A lot of work awaits me in the First World," he says with a rather un-Christian wink. "After all, there are demons everywhere."

Parents sentenced for exorcism gone wrong

By Gloria Galloway ("The Toronto Globe and Mail," May 23, 2003)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/3906/

Walter Zepeda was possessed by the devil.

His parents, devoutly religious members of a Pentecostal church that believes in such manifestations, knew that much to be true.

They had seen their shy 19-year-old son engage in behaviours that could only signal the presence of Satan.

So Diego Zepeda-Cordera called his friend Alex Osegueda, a fellow member of the Missionary Church of Christ and a man of equal devotion, to help him rid his son of the evil. They had no idea the seven days of forced confinement it took to drive away the devil would also, literally, drain the life out of Walter.

He lost nine litres of fluid as he lay strapped with men's ties to metal chairs in the basement apartment he shared with his family in this western Ontario city. Ultimately he died of dehydration.

Yesterday, the squarely cut shoulders of Mr. Zepeda-Cordero heaved silently as a judge sentenced him and Mr. Osegueda to four years in penitentiary for the ritual that caused the death of the teen.

They had pleaded guilty to manslaughter last week, ending a preliminary hearing that heard from 24 witnesses, among them some who had prayed over Walter as he lay bound in his bedroom.

The young man's mother, Ana Mejia-Lopez, sobbed into a handkerchief as she was given a single day for failing to provide the necessaries of life to her son. She was freed yesterday afternoon the 500th day the trio had spent in incarceration.

Ontario Court Judge Deborah Livingstone said she had been struck through the long hours of the preliminary hearing by their emotion, obvious distress, and significant remorse.

"The court cannot but have compassion for the loss of a son, the loss of a friend, which all three will have to live with for the rest of their lives."

But in passing the sentence, a compromise between the three years requested by defence lawyers and the five suggested by the Crown, Judge Livingstone said the sanctity of life must be upheld.

"A young man is gone," she said gravely.

Both Mr. Zepeda-Cordero and Mr. Osegueda have agreed in the months since Walter died that they were performing an exorcism. But it was not a botched exorcism, they said.

Mr. Zepeda-Cordero's lawyer, Andy Rady, told the court his client takes some solace in his belief that, in the hours before Walter's life ebbed away, the devil also left his body.

"When Walter died, he [Mr. Zepeda-Cordero] believed that he returned to Jesus," Mr. Rady said. "Although he still believes in the rightness of the ends he was trying to achieve, he understands the wrongness of the way he went about it."

Mr. Zepeda-Cordero, his wife and Mr. Osegueda were all born in El Salvador and came to Canada in the 1980s when their country was a dangerous and desperate place. They moved first to Montreal, where Mr. Zepeda-Cordero found God, then on to London.

Carol Lee, who cut hair with Mr. Zepeda-Cordero at Emmerich's barber shop, said he was the kind of man "who would give you the shirt off his back" but was preoccupied by his devotion.

When someone sat in his chair for a haircut, they could expect a sermon. "If they'd go for it, he'd talk about it," she said. "But sometimes customers got peeved off."

Walter, who would often have his dad cut his hair, had finished school and worked part-time as a dishwasher in a seafood restaurant. He was quiet and posed no trouble for his parents, unlike his siblings.

His sister, Karen, who was 17 when Walter died, has significant mental-health problems, Crown attorney David Arntfield said yesterday.

Walter's brother, Diego, was charged with drug trafficking after an early-morning police raid on the family apartment that began with a frightening crash through the front door. That deeply affected Walter, his father has said, and his strange behaviour began a short time later in the fall of 2001.

Some of it was normal kid stuff. Walter went to discos and smoked cigarettes and refused to help with housework. He liked rap music and a magazine describing satanic activities was found under his bed.

But there was a bizarre incident when the normally quiet teen went to the front of a religious meeting in Toronto and took the microphone to profess his devotion to Christ then spoke gibberish.

His father, Mr. Osegueda and others then drove with him to Montreal and he threatened to jump out of the car. Once in Montreal, he tried to escape by running away in the snow barefoot.

For Mr. Zepeda-Cordero and Mr. Osegueda, the incidents added up to demonic possession and "they both agreed that Walter had to be prayed for," Mr. Arntfield said. That meant strapping him down.

The two men wrestled him into submission on Jan. 2, 2002, and tied him to the chairs in the apartment. His mother, who didn't originally agree with the action, acquiesced because she too believed Satan had control of her son.

Walter struggled against his restraints to the point that his wrists and ankles were a mass of bruises, but that was interpreted "as an example of the devil or the demon doing what he would with Walter," Mr. Arntfield said.

The morning after he was tied up, Rev. Guillermo Fabian, the pastor of the church, was summoned to the home. As Walter swore and squirmed, Mr. Fabian prayed with the family to help exorcise the demon. He came back the next day and Walter was lying in his own urine a problem solved by dressing him in adult diapers.

Over the weekend, at least 10 other members of the church visited the home and joined in the prayer sessions.

Diane Millar, who lives next door, heard the chanting, even at 2 a.m. "It just didn't sound right, but with them being non-English, you couldn't understand what they were saying," she said. It could have been a party so she didn't lodge a complaint, she said.

All this time, Walter's parents say they were offering him liquid, even his favourite Chinese soup, but he refused it all. When he screamed too loud, his mouth was duct-taped. And by Sunday, those who saw him were worried about his health. One said he "looked sick and dying."

On Monday, Mr. Fabian urged Mr. Zepeda-Cordero to let his son go. That night, Walter was calm and his father came to the conclusion the devil had finally left the boy's body.

"Walter's last words were 'forgive me,' then he fell asleep," Mr. Arntfield said.

The straps were removed and he was placed on a bed, but by then it was too late. A few hours later he stopped breathing. First his father called Mr. Fabian. Then, at the pastor's urging, he called the police.

The three accused and Mr. Fabian originally tried to deceive police into believing Walter had been restrained for only three days but the lie was eventually revealed.

Despite the deception, it is obvious the trio "genuinely believed that Walter was possessed," Judge Livingstone said. "They only wanted to help him, wanted to save his soul, but the facts of the matter show that despite their prayer and the zealousness of their religious convictions, what they did and what they did not do caused Walter's death."

Fury Over Live Telly Exorcism

By Nicola Methven ("Daily Record," January 4, 2005)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/14618/?&place=united-states&section=general

Church leaders angrily condemned Channel 4 last night over plans to broadcast a live exorcism.

TV morality campaigners also slammed the idea, branding it harmful and dangerous.

The programme, called Exorcism, will be shown next month.

An insider said: 'The aim is to test the science involved.

'It would involve officials from the church and leading scientists and we would monitor precisely what happens during the process.'

Taste Sky TV are planning a separate show called When Exorcisms Go Wrong, featuring amateur videos of rites from around the world.

Broadcasting watchdogs Ofcom say demonstrations of exorcisms and other 'occult practices' should not be shown on factual TV 'except in the context of a legitimate investigation'.

But a source said: 'The producers will insist they should be allowed to broadcast the exorcism on the grounds that it's a form of scientific experimentation and a legitimate part of church practice.

'Whether the broadcasting authorities see it like that is another matter.'

A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland branded the show 'a ratings-grabbing attempt to push the boundaries of taste'.

He said: 'Each exorcism deals with very complex psychological, spiritual and emotional issues which cannot be easily monitored or measured.

'To try to analyse some kind of scientific results would be a non-starter.'

Groups like Mediawatch, founded by the late Mary Whitehouse, claim shows about the paranormal can harm vulnerable viewers.

They blame the BBC's Ghostwatch, a spoof Halloween show 13 years ago, for driving a young viewer to suicide.

John Beyer, Mediawatch director, said of the Channel 4 exorcism: 'This sounds very dangerous and ºis likely to cause considerable unease. Getting ratings is all the broad- casters are bothered about.This is not only ill-advised, it could be harmful.

'If Ghostwatch is anything to go by, vulnerable people do take notice. Surely someone killing themselves as a consequence of a TV programme should be enough to set a precedent.'

A spokesman for Channel 4 confirmed the exorcism programme was planned for later in the year.

And a Sky One spokesman claimed their show would be 'a thought-provoking exploration of a controversial subject'.

Satanist Church Rents Out Oklahoma City Civic Center for Exorcism

By Sarah Netter ("ABC News," September 1, 2010)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/34084/?&place=united-states&section=occult

Oklahoma City, USA - The leader of an Satanic church firmly planted in the Bible Belt has raised eyebrows by renting a theater in the Oklahoma City Civic Center for a ritual exorcism of God.

The Church of the IV Majesties is inviting members and the public to view the ritual, in hopes of erasing a lot of the unfounded fears many have about Satanism.

"We don't kill animals, we don't kill children," James Hale, the church's Lord High Master, told ABCNews.com.

"We just decided that being right here in the middle of the Bible Belt, it wasn't a good idea to keep the secrecy you see in the traditional Satanist churches," he said. "Because secrecy breeds fear. And we're not looking to scare anyone."

Citing concerns for privacy and safety, Hale declined to say how many members the church has besides the seven members who are named on the church's state listing as a tax exempt religious organization, a designation they were awarded this spring.

Five Charged over Nun's 'Exorcism Death'

By ("PA News," June 23, 2005)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/17518/?&place=eastern-europe

Bucharest, Romania - A Romanian monk and four nuns have been charged with murder after a nun died during an exorcism ritual in which she was apparently crucified in a case which has sparked outrage and angry scenes in Romania in the last week.

Daniel Petre Corogeanu and four nuns were charged with depriving a person of liberty and aggravated murder after testifying for 11 hours to prosecutors. They were later detained by police, said prosecutor Ovidiu Berinde.

Maricica Irina Cornici, a 23-year-old nun died last week in the Holy Trinity convent just outside the village of Tanacu in a remote region in northeast Romania after she was allegedly bound to a cross, left in a cold room, had a towel stuffed into her mouth and deprived of food for three days.

There were angry scenes outside the courthouse in the northeast city of Vaslui yesterday, in one of Romania’s remotest and poorest regions near the border with Moldova.

Corogeanu, a red-bearded 29-year-old monk, was jostled by shrieking locals calling for justice saying he had brought the Orthodox Church into disrepute. Others crammed against iron railings outside the prosecutor’s office, claiming the monk and nuns were innocent.

Amid heated local passions, Corgeanu’s attorney Luana Pintilie Thursday called for the case to be moved to the city of Iasi. The court in Vasului refused.

“Magistrates should not have pressure from the street, locals and the media who are camped outside the prosecutor’s door,” she said, adding if there was a trial in Iasi “peasants will not have the money to come to Iasi,” she said.

On Sunday, the five were charged in connection with causing the nun’s death but were not detained, pending the results of a second autopsy.

Corogeanu has been suspended by the church and the convent has been closed by the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Corogeanu has appeared to be unrepentant. When he performed a funeral service for the dead nun on Sunday, he said he was trying to take devils out of the woman.

When asked whether the nun was mentally ill and in need of medical help instead of exorcism, he responded: “You can’t take the devil out of people with pills. You cure (possession by) the devils with fasting and prayer.”

He added the nun had to be restrained because she was violent, but denied that she was starved.

If found guilty, the monk and the nuns could face 25 years in prison.

Doctors, Priests Form Exorcism Commission

By (Reuters, February 13, 2004)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/15291/?&place=europe&section=occult

Faced with growing demand for exorcisms, Catholic Church leaders in the Italian city of Genoa have created a taskforce of doctors and priests to determine when the devil is at work and when psychiatric help is needed.

The team of three priests, one psychiatrist, one psychologist and one neurologist -- dubbed the "anti-Satan pool" by Italian media -- will work on a case-by-case basis, a local church official said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

"They'll meet on a regular basis to determine when there has been a case of demonic possession and call for an exorcist, or problems better cared for by a psychologist," said the official, who asked not to be named.

For Catholics, exorcism is the casting out of what is believed to be an evil spirit through prayer and the laying on of hands.

One of the church's leading exorcists praised the initiative, saying medical experts are needed to rule out mental problems before spiritual work can begin.

"I never accept anyone who arrives without a medical certificate," Father Gabriele Amorth told Corriere della Sera newspaper.

The Genoa taskforce was created by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

The official Catholic exorcism starts with prayers, the blessing and sprinkling of holy water, the laying of hands on the possessed, and the making of the sign of the cross.

It ends with the priest commanding the devil to leave the possessed person.

While the church does not often talk openly about exorcisms, Bertone said the need for them is there.

"It has become difficult to talk about Satan, but the signs of the devil are palpable," he told Corriere della Sera in comments published Thursday.

Troubled Pakistanis turn to exorcism for help

By Rebecca Conway (Reuters, December 20, 2011)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/36650/?&place=pakistan&section=islam

Karachi, Pakistan - A girl in a long black shirt screams incoherently, banging her head against a wall at a Sufi shrine in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Sania Haneef's family says she is possessed by a demon.

Doctors could not help, so they brought the college student, kicking and screaming, to be exorcised by the spirit of a saint.

The West mostly associates Pakistan with Taliban militants who force women to cover from head to toe, blow up girls' schools and carry out suicide bombings. But Islam in the South Asian nation of 180 million is far more diverse.

Many flock to shrines like the one where Haneef's relatives seek solace in the Sufi strand of Islam abhorred by militants and considered more liberal in its philosophy than other branches followed by Shi'ites and Sunnis.

"Sania has been possessed since she was six years old," her brother, Mohammed, said, describing how an evil spirit, known as a jinn, would speak through her in a man's voice.

"The shrine has captured the spirit. Sania will be cured soon. None of us is leaving until that happens."

Pakistanis are beset by problems -- violence, crippling power cuts, poverty and dilapidated hospitals are but a few.

The government, seen as inept and corrupt, offers little relief.

Many people think their suffering is inflicted by evil spirits intent on destroying marriage prospects, businesses and health, and that only Sufi saints can help.

But that's a risky belief in Pakistan. Militants, including the al Qaeda-linked Taliban, have over the years bombed Sufi shrines which they consider heretical.

During an annual celebration this year at one in the central Pakistani town of Dera Ghazi Khan, the Taliban dispatched suicide bombers who killed 41 people.

A double suicide bombing in 2010 at Pakistan's most important Sufi shrine, in the city of Lahore, killed about 42 people.

But fears of possession, and life's many challenges, keep driving people back to the shrines. Sufism is a mystical form of Islam which adheres closely to the traditions of Islam but also reflects secularism and universalism in spiritual matters.

It is especially strong in Sindh province, where Pakistan's biggest city and commercial hub of Karachi is located.

"JINNS HAVE SEX WITH US"

"The whole concept of jinns, which previously would have been a belief in some other kind of spirit, has been converted into Islamic parlance," said Ali Khan, an anthropologist at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Self-proclaimed exorcists thrive on these beliefs. They claim special powers from God which enable them to help people cope with everything, from domestic disturbances to infertility and impotence. Some even say they can help people find love.

In a dimly lit shack just outside a shrine, Syed Aliuddin, wearing a white robe and silk cap set with a green stone resembling an emerald, listens to people lament.

One man, an electrician, complains his wife is disobedient. In a carefully rehearsed ritual, the exorcist with a white beard writes prayers on strips of paper and douses them in water.

Customers then drink it, believing his promise that it only takes 10 minutes to take effect.

Aliuddin says he can fight 18,000 types of evil spirits made from fire. Like others in his trade, he is keeping pace with the information age, running his own website and offering consultations by email and mobile phone.

"Some possess bodies out of jealousy, others out of love, some have other motives," said Aliuddin, who charges between 50 rupees (55 cents) and 250 rupees a session, which last up to 30 minutes.

"Jinns swim inside us when they possess us, feed on us, have sex with each other and with us."

The more serious the issue, the more radical the cure.

Jamila Bibi turned to the Abdullah Shah Ashabi shrine in the ancient, dusty town of Thatta in Sindh province.

Her son, Muhammed, began having violent fits four months ago. The 18-year-old is chained by his ankle to a wall. He sits silently, staring at others who are chained or are praying.

"We want him to be close to the spirit of the saint. We have had to chain him so he doesn't hit other people," she said.

In a country where a heavy stigma is attached to mental illness, and the state spends little on health, many see spiritual healing as the only option.

"This is more about a lack of education and awareness, rather than access to medical facilities. It's a desperate attempt to seek hope," said psychologist Rizwan Taj.

Nearby, Rahim Yar, who suffers from memory loss and extreme physical weakness, starts screaming.

He has been at the shrine, which has marble floors and surrounds a domed tomb of a Sufi saint, for four years.

"The jinn inside me says he needs to take me to India, to a temple where people are sacrificed," Rahim said.

"He says he will not leave me and I must be sacrificed."