Need a Job? Try Exorcism

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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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.