News, analysis, and documents on the Catholic Church, by Sandro Magister, Rome
Hellish cults, drugs, and crime: the satanism of the young reaps its victims in Italy. Its organizations and subcultures. The pope´s exorcisms, and the opinion of a famous exorcist, Fr. Gabriele Amorth
by Sandro Magister
ROMA - Fabio, 16, had fallen in with the "Beasts of Satan," holed himself up in the shady Milan bars behind Porta Romana, sang black metal in the Circus of Satanis, and wrote in his diary that "the ancient ones will rise up again, with the lord of the shadows at their head."
His tortured body was found in a pit in the woods of Somma Lombardo, next to that of Chiara, 19, another member of the group. They disappeared on January 17, 1998. It took more than six years and the death of another girl, Mariangela, killed with a gun and a shovel last January 24, plus four other suspected deaths and the capture and confession of Andrea, Nicola, Pietro, Mario, and Elisabetta to discover this inferno.
Satan is back. But in his way, he´s always been there. June 6, 2000 was another of his darkest and most devious days in Italy. At Chiavenna, three young girls from 16 to 17 years old - Ambra, Veronica, and Milena - wanting to dispel their boredom, infatuated by the songs of Marilyn Manson and lured by fashionable forms of satanism, ambush the most beloved religious sister of the area, Sister Maria Laura Mainetti, and kill her with nineteen stab wounds: this was, by accident, one more than according to the rule of six plus six plus six, the symbolic number of the prince of darkness.
The same day, at Modena, the tribunal threatens fourteen men from Bassa Padana with sentences ranging from two to fourteen years in prison, for satanic rites involving child molestation. A priest, Fr. Giorgio Govoni, greatly beloved by his parishioners, was among the accused, but he died of a heart attack shortly after the public minister´s address. The next year, the appeals court of Bologna completely acquitted him. The charge of group satanic rituals fell to pieces, and it became clear that the only true crime involved was the molestation of some children by seven of the condemned, and this not in cemeteries, but at home and within the family.
Satan is the prince of deceit. Even when he appears, you never know if he is authentic. Charles Manson, one of his most famous devotees, the man who, in 1969, killed actress Sharon Tate, the wife of director Roman Polanski, dragged Satan into the middle of things only after the crime, in order to increase the stature of the massacre. And, in effect, his trial received memorable media exposure.
Another case of the interweaving of truth and propaganda is that of Marco Dimitri, the founder and head of the "Children of Satan," in Bologna. Appealing, as if to his spiritual instructor, to the English sorcerer Aleister Crowley, who called himself "the wickedest man in the world," Dimitri exalts a Satan more symbolic than personal: "money, orgasm, music, lesbianism, and betrayal." His rites take place between broken-down hovels and city apartments, with black curtains, skulls, and diabolical designs. His adepts are signed with the 666 of the Great Beast, written in blood. Unbridled sex is the rule, including incest. In 1992, the military police interrupted a rite in full swing. Trial, acquittal, and publicity. Dimitri became a guest in high demand for the television talk shows: the only self-declared, public satanist in Italy, the number of his adepts jumped from a few dozen to two hundred. But he is also more closely observed than before. In 1996, he was accused of acts of sexual molestation against a woman and a boy, and of human sacrifice. He was arrested, tried, and acquitted for these crimes, but was convicted for tax evasion: he charged admission for his rites, and pocketed the money without issuing any receipts. In 1999, there was another police investigation. Dimitri accused Catholic anti-cult groups of persecuting him unfairly, and the anonymous libertarians of Bologna who sign themselves as Luther Blisset came to his defense. Today, his "Children of Satan" are still the most organized and numerous of the satanic groups in Italy, but the number of his adepts has fallen to fewer than fifty. Publicity was for him a two-edged sword, and worked more against him than in his favor.
There is a high and a low satanism. The former is organized, with centers, publications, and newspapers. In Italy, apart from Dimitri´s cult, there are two Churches of Satan in schism with each other, and a handful of miniscule groups. In all there are just over two hundred affiliates, and thousands of them throughout the world. It is the most elaborate form of satanism, but also the one easiest to control. This is the form that goes into the history books, beginning with its debut at the court of the Sun King, in the middle of the 1600´s. It was a Parisian aristocrat, Catherine La Voisin, who invented the black mass, a perverse parody of the Catholic mass, with sexual practices and child sacrifices on the altar. It was demolished by Louis XIV´s frosty police chief, Nicholas de la Reynie.
A century later, the vampires came onto the scene, with the Catholic Church at the forefront of skepticism. In the mid-1700´s, while reports of diabolical Transylvania were causing an uproar among Enlightenment circles, in Rome Benedict XIV, the cultivated Lambertini pope, denounced the fraud and put the bishops on guard against falling for the device. Today, vampirism survives in some branches of the Church of Satan. But the adepts do not suck blood by biting the neck of the designated victim: they draw and exchange it with unromantic hospital syringes.
Modern satanism has Aleister Crowley as its standard-bearer, and its birth in San Francisco in 1966, its founder being the failed moviemaker Anton Szandor LaVey. It was immediately fashionable in Hollywood, and Jayne Mansfield was among its first adherents. LaVey does not believe in the existence of Satan; his motto is "indulgence instead of abstinence," the triumph of uncontrolled pleasure, with the devil purely as a metaphor. But precisely because of this, his rationalist satanism produced a schism by the believers in a real Satan, headed by Michael Aquino. In 1975, he founded the Temple of Set, which, with its three hundred members, is today the largest satanic cult in the world.
In the meantime, fortunes have changed. Satanism finds its place in the worldwide media not among the innocuous oddities, but in the reports of planetary terror. A Canadian Catholic psychiatrist, Lawrence Pazder, brought to the Vatican one of his patients, Michelle, who while in therapy brought out from her memory that she had been raped, when she was a child, by satanists belonging to a worldwide cult, of having witnessed acts of cannibalism, and of seeing the devil directing everything. Pazder´s thesis is that these memories, which recur under hypnosis in thousands of analogous cases, correspond completely to the truth. His book, "Michelle Remembers," published in 1980, became a best-seller. But the Vatican does not agree with him. For once they agree with Freud, who had dismissed similar memories as fantasy.
It is not high satanism, but the low form that most worries the Church: the disordered and wild satanism that has no organizations, addresses, or ideologies, but permeates circles of pedophiles, criminal gangs, sadomasochist clubs, and above all groups of young people. It is not the satanism of Charles Manson, but rather that of his namesake, Marilyn Manson. Not that of the black masses, but of black metal music.
Wild satanism knows nothing of the elaborations of occultism. It surfs the internet, lives in the discotheques, uses drugs, and listens to and reproduces a very particular kind of music. It is the music of the Dark Wave, "Gothic," which began in the 1970´s in England and the United States with Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath, and immediately became a subculture dripping with blood, death, and the macabre, with its own slang, its own style of dressing all in black, its magazines like "Propaganda" and "Ghastly," its horror fiction, like that of Anne Rice, its music groups. One of the most successful of these last is Venom, with the compilation "Welcome to Hell," from 1997: "I´m in league with Satan / I was raised in Hell / I walk the streets of Salem / Amongst the living dead / I need no one to tell me / What´s wrong or right / I drink the blood of children / Stalk my prey at night."
Or "Carnage," by Mayhem, on the CD "Live in Leipzig" from 1990: "Witchcraft, blood and Satan / Meet the face of Death / Blood / Fire / Torture / Pin / Kill / Winds of war, winds of hate / Armageddon, tales from Hell / The wage of mayhem, the wage of sin / Come and hear, Lucifer´s sings."
Black metal music is naziesque, anti-Jewish, and relentlessly anti-Christian. A CD from 1995 by Marduk, a Swedish group, is entitled "Fuck Me Jesus" and has as its cover art the image of a young woman masturbating with a crucifix. Especially in northern Europe, its fans burn churches and desecrate tombs in the cemeteries. In 1992, a member of the black metal band Emperor killed a gay man in the street in Lillehammer, simply because he couldn´t stand seeing him walk by.
John Paul II caught a glimpse of this shadowy, infernal cloud when he decided at the midpoint of his pontificate, almost as if by instinct, to dedicate himself body and soul to the young masses. The World Youth Days are his crusade against the smoke of Satan, in defense of the purity of the new generation. The children of light against the children of darkness. He has scant following within the Church; the devil and hell have fallen into disuse, and exorcisms are fewer than few. But here, too, the pope holds the torch up high. He practices exorcisms himself, and not in secret. That the world may know.
The first was in 1978, at the request of a famous Roman exorcist who worked at the Scala Santa next to the basilica of St. John Lateran, Fr. Candido Amantini.
The second was on March 27, 1982. The bishop of Spoleto brought a young woman, Francesca, to the pope. Seeing him, she became agitated and cried out, but calmed down when John Paul II promised her: "Tomorrow, I will say mass for you." A year later, Francesca returned to visit him with her husband, calm and happy, and expecting a child.
The third was on September 6, 2000. A girl of 19, already having undergone exorcisms, exploded in fury at the end of the pope´s public audience. John Paul II wanted her close to him, and dedicated a half hour of prayer and blessing to her. He also promised her he would say mass for her.
The next day, with the exorcist taking care of her, Fr. Gabriele Amorth (see below), the girl spoke with the cavernous voice of the demon: "Not even the pope was able to defeat me." Three months earlier, under the sign of Satan, Sister Maria Laura had been stabbed to death in Chiavenna. And Chiara and Fabio were already underground in the woods of Somma Lombardo. The challenge continues.
__________
"The Devil Is Extremely Content if People Don´t Believe in Him Anymore"
An interview with Fr. Gabriele Amorth
Gabriele Amorth (in the photo above), 80, is the most famous official exorcist in the world. His book "An Exorcist Speaks" has been translated into fourteen languages. He has worked in Rome since 1986, wrestling with Satan every day. "At the beginning I prayed to Mary: wrap me in your protective mantle. She listened to me. I have been threatened by the devil many times, but never harmed."
Q: Fr. Amorth, first the three girls of Chiavenna, then Erica and Omar, and now the young group of Somma Lombardo. Is Satan working in them?
A: "That is certainly true, I have studied the first two cases well. Those young people were given over to the devil, they read satanic books. And the incredible ferocity of their acts! When a girl stabs her own mother ninety-seven times, one must see that as the work of the prince of darkness."
Q: Are there times when Satan is more active than at others?
A: "In an ordinary way, Satan is always active. He is a tempter since the beginning. He does everything he can to make man sin, and every time evil is done he is always behind it, though it is always true that man freely decides his own acts. But then there is an extraordinary action of the evil one, and this is diabolical possession."
Q: Are cases of possession frequent?
A: "No, they are rare. But I can´t give precise figures. I have in my care many cases of true demonic possession, but that is because the most difficult cases come to me, the ones not resolved by other exorcists. During the first years of my activity, when I welcomed all without screening, the great majority were mentally ill persons, without demonic activity."
Q: How do you know that someone is possessed?
A: "I find this out during treatment, not before. An unequivocal symptom is the violent, visceral aversion to anything sacred. I remember a father who was afraid that his son was possessed by the devil, and one day, while they were together at table, he mentally said a Hail Mary for him. The boy burst out with a cry: ´No, Dad, be quiet!´ Then there is speaking in unknown languages, exploding with a superhuman force, and levitation: these are all things that happen during exorcisms."
Q: How does a possessed person live from one crisis to another?
A. "Normally. He goes to work, and no one knows. He keeps his state well hidden. When he feels a crisis coming on, he removes himself, closes himself in the bathroom, vents his rage, and then returns impassively to his place. This is all the more true for the possessed who are undergoing treatment, to whom exorcism gives the strength to return to a normal life. One thing must be emphasized: diabolical possession is not hereditary, nor is it contagious."
Q: What links the possessed with satanists?
A: "It frequently happens that a person becomes possessed after entering a spiritualist or satanic cult. There are few of these in my care, because only repentant satanists ask for exorcism. But I think there are many more among them. It is easy to enter the satanic cults, but extremely difficult to get out. In some cases, one risks one´s life."
Q: And what bond do the satanists have with the devil?
A: "There are two kinds: those who worship the devil, celebrate satanic masses, and have a priesthood and a hierarchy; and those who do not believe at all in the personal existence of Satan, but give themselves over to acts that are filthy and against nature. This other satanism is the more dangerous."
A: John Paul II has said exorcisms for three possessed persons. Have they been released?
A: "The third, no. I have had her in my care since 1998, and hers is a truly sad case."
Q: Apart from the pope, what is belief in the devil like in the Church?
A: "Very diminished. And the devil is extremely content with that, because that frees his hand to do his work. The Church has gone from one extreme to the other. To correct the folly of witch hunting, who instead of being exorcised were burned, it has erased everything, both devil and exorcism. The result is that entire Catholic regions no longer have even a single exorcist: Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Switzerland. I admire the Italian bishops. They don´t understand anything about it, but at least they appoint exorcists. Last year there was a meeting of the Italian exorcists: there were one hundred and seventy of us."
Q: Explain better; in what sense do the bishops not understand anything about this?
A: "Because they, like all priests, have studied at the seminary. And for a long time, the seminary has taught nothing about angels or demons, nothing about exorcisms, nothing about the sins against the first commandment, ´You shall have no God but me´: magic, spiritism, and satanism."
Q: And the Vatican curia?
A: "The same incompetence. They approved a new ritual which, for the exorcists, is a disaster. It forbids acting in the case of a curse, when this is the source of 90 percent of the cases of possession. It forbids acting if there is no previous certainty of diabolical action, when this can be understood only in the course of action. Fortunately, the old ritual is still valid. I use that one; otherwise, I would have to quit."
[From "L´espresso," number 24, June 11-17, 2004]
__________
A more ample interview with Fr. Gabriele Amorth, on the same themes, appeared in the June, 2001 edition of "30 Days":
> Il fumo di Satana nella casa del Signore
__________
An excellent source of documentation on satanic cults and satanism is CESNUR, directed by professor Massimo Introvigne:
> Center for Studies on New Religions
__________
English translation by Matthew Sherry: > traduttore@hotmail.com
Go to the home page of > www.chiesa.espressonline.it/english, to access the latest articles and links to other resources.
Sandro Magister´s e-mail address is s.magister@espressoedit.it
