Spiritual Warfare

Human rights groups say that Chinese Catholics who remain loyal to the Vatican often suffern persecution, with the detention of Bishops fairly common. Even Pope Benedict XVI confirmed that shedding of blood became unavoidable in the process. On 21 November 2010 , the state-run Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), which claims to be Roman Catholics in China when in fact it is an association that the People's Republic of China Religious Affairs Bureau (PRC-RAB) established in 1957 to exercise state supervision over Roman Catholics in mainland China. Pope Benedict XVI, in his letter to the Catholics in China on 27 May 2007, referred to them as "persons who are not ordained, and sometimes not even baptized, control and take decisions concerning important ecclesial questions, including the appointment of Bishops, in the name of various State agencies," consequently "demeaning" the "Petrine and episcopal ministries."  Right now the Pope identif...

Polish exorcist Father Andrzej Grefkowicz said, "Most of the time exorcism requires quiet prayer." Since 1999 the number of Polish exorcists has surged from 30 to over a 100, despite the influence of the Catholic Church waning in an increasingly secular Poland. [ Read more. ]

Citing a shortage of priests who can perform the rite, the nation's Roman Catholic bishops are holding a conference on how to conduct exorcisms. 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." [ Read more. ]