Need a Job? Try Exorcism

Posted on Nov 13, 2010

AP / Marco Ravagli

Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez of Chile holds the book “Of Exorcisms and Supplications,” the Vatican’s guidelines on exorcism, at the Vatican in 1999.

While jobs may be scarce in most parts of the country, look out for a boom in the exorcism sector. A shortage in the number of clergy who can perform the rite has led the U.S. Catholic Church to hold a training session in the sacred art of purging spirits from the possessed. —JCL

The Associated Press:

The two-day training, which ends Saturday in Baltimore, is to outline the scriptural basis of evil, instruct clergy on evaluating whether a person is truly possessed, and review the prayers and rituals that comprise an exorcism. Among the speakers will be Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston, Texas, and a priest-assistant to New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

“Learning the liturgical rite is not difficult,” DiNardo said in a phone interview before the conference, which is open to clergy only. “The problem is the discernment that the exorcist needs before he would ever attempt the rite.”

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