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Devil Defeats The Pope
In Vatican Exorcism Battle
By Bruce Johnston in Rome
link
9-11-00
- THE Pope carried out an impromptu exorcism on a teenage
girl after she began "screaming insults in a cavernous voice"
during an audience in the Vatican City, it emerged at the weekend.
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- Despite the Pope's efforts and those of his chief "Satan-buster",
Fr Gabriele Amorth, the girl remained "possessed". The Devil's
voice "sneeringly laughed from within her" at the Pope's failed
attempt to drive him away.
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- "The Devil went to the Vatican," the Il Messaggero
newspaper in Rome reported after being told of the incident by Fr Amorth.
He said the exorcism had been the Pope's third in his 22-year papacy.
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- The paper said that although there may have been other
instances of people being possessed in the Vatican, last week's incident
had been "spectacular" and Satan had "shown his muscles".
The incident occurred during last Wednesday's general audience in a packed
St Peter's Square. Suddenly the unnamed 19-year-old girl from Monza began
shouting "in a cavernous voice and as if in a fit of rage".
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- Constrained by Vatican guards, she was said to have displayed
"a super-human strength" as she violently pushed them away. Bishop
Gianni Danzi, Secretary-General of Vatican City, intervened and sought
to calm her by showed her a crucifix. But she began "insulting him,
uttering disconnected phrases, and speaking in unknown tongues".
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- Bishop Danzi hurriedly informed the Pope's private secretary,
Mgr Stanislao Dziwisz, who in turn told the pontiff. After driving around
the piazza in his Popemobile, the Pope talked to the girl, exorcised her,
and stayed with her for half an hour. He prayed for her and assured her
that he would say a Mass for her the next day "to obtain her liberation".
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- But it appeared afterwards that the Pope's intervention
had only a temporary effect on the girl. She was said to have been "possessed
since she was 12", as a result of someone putting a curse on her out
of hatred for her parents. She had been taken by her mother and father
to the audience in the hope that a papal blessing would be of some benefit.
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- Fr Amorth claimed that the Vatican had attempted to cover
up the affair. He said: "I exorcised the very same girl on [the day
before the indident] together with another exorcist, Fr Giancarlo Gramolazzo.
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- "She is a splendid girl in terms of purity and goodness.
Her case of possession by the Devil is terrible. It moves one to pity to
see her suffer so, all bent over and contracted."
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