Exorcisms Maintain a Spirited Following Among Mexican Faithful

The Rev. Alberto Juarez has seen a young woman erupt in an angry man’s voice and growl like a dog. Father Enrique Maldonado tells of houses where locked doors flew open and objects moved about.

In these days of high technology and lunch-hour therapy sessions, many people think of exorcism as a relic of the Middle Ages. But the ritual to drive away the forces of evil is alive and well around the globe, perhaps no more so than in Mexico.

In Mexico City, a metropolis of 20 million people, a steady procession of anguished souls passes through the doors of Catholic parishes to seek out the eight priests appointed by the archbishop to do battle with Satan.

Others who believe they are possessed consult Protestant ministers or the country’s wide assortment of faith healers, who employ an elaborate blend of religious and pagan customs to cast out evil spirits.

Juarez has performed three exorcisms in the two years since he was named a Catholic exorcist. One was on a young woman from the southern state of Campeche, whose father, a psychiatrist, had been unable to explain her behavior in clinical terms.

“She said, ‘Something is inside me, someone is doing something to me,’ ” Juarez said. “She had an expression of profound sadness, a deep depression. . . . But when Satan entered her, she became completely different.

“I told her to get up, ‘I want to greet you,’ and she slapped me. Then she began to speak in the very ugly voice of a man. It was frightening. I tried to hug her, and she began to growl like a dog.”

Maldonado treated a woman in her 20s who spoke in languages she didn’t know.

“And when I began to pray with her, she began to attack me,” he said. “She spit on the cross and went into shock when I blessed her with holy water.”

A second client, a 19-year-old man who regularly used Ouija boards with his family, “started to emit a very foul odor, inexplicably,” Maldonado said. “The family also started to see objects move in the house, doors that were locked with a key opening by themselves.”

Mexico is full of people who believe they are possessed. Although it is an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation, Christianity here is interwoven with centuries of pre-Hispanic rites of witchcraft, black magic and faith healing.

“Fortunetelling, consulting the dead, the spirits, astrology--all of these are the terrain of evil,” Juarez said. “Magic is a breeding ground for the work of Satan.”

Exorcists say the number of people seeking help has doubled and even tripled recently and point to a series of factors:

* The release of a new version of the 1973 movie “The Exorcist.”

* Reports that Pope John Paul II himself tried to exorcise the devil from a young woman in Rome in September.

* A highly publicized case of a botched unauthorized exorcism in nearby Puebla state, in which several women were seriously injured.

The exorcist’s job is to distinguish between those obsessed with the belief that dark forces are attacking them and what the church considers “true” possessions.

They also have to discount mental illness. Juarez is studying psychology, and Maldonado already has a degree.

The Catholic Church recognizes several symptoms it considers to be true possession: prolonged superhuman strength, speaking a language the person has never learned, and knowing things they couldn’t possibly know. The priests say true possession accounts for fewer than 2% of the cases they see.

Father Daniel Gagnon, pastor of the Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Mexico City, said he has seen “entire families that are oppressed by evil forces.”

“One family has been tormented for years and years with objects moving, levitations, animals appearing and disappearing before their eyes,” said Gagnon, who is not an exorcist but has researched the matter extensively and has referred many people to an authorized exorcist from a nearby parish.

“I don’t think I would have had half the experiences in the States that I have had here,” Gagnon said. “Because of the pre-Hispanic culture, there are a lot of superstitions.”

Exorcists are appointed for each of the church’s dioceses by their bishops. Although there are no solid statistics for Mexico, there is approximately one exorcist for each of the country’s 83 dioceses, said Father Francisco Javier Gonzalez, executive secretary of Mexico’s conference of bishops.

To drive away evil, exorcists use the crucifix, prayers and blessings. Maldonado and Juarez said they take the person to a sacred, private place--usually their own church or chapel--and with the aid of other faithful, recite a series of prayers prescribed by the church.

The prayers denounce evil, order the devil to leave, and ask for liberation in the name of Jesus Christ. The process has no defined duration but can last up to an hour, Juarez said.

“You must always have the crucifix in hand as well as the scriptures in order to use the precise words of Christ,” he said.

He said he employs five members of a parish Bible group to help during a ceremony because sometimes the possessed person becomes violent “and someone has to hold them.”

But priests said violence is never directed at the possessed, as was the case in an unauthorized July ceremony in Puebla state during which a young Sunday-school teacher was critically burned with a candle.

Church spokesmen have said that the priest involved was not authorized to perform exorcisms but that he was forced to attend the ceremony against his will.

“A priest approved by the bishop would never take part in this type of physical harm,” Maldonado said. “Why? Because we already have our own recourses: prayer and getting closer to the Bible.”

New exorcism guidelines issued by the Vatican last year urge exorcists not to mistake psychiatric illness for satanic possession. But the guidelines also stress the power of evil.

“I believe that we exorcist priests shouldn’t be ingenuous, seeing Satan everywhere, or skeptics either, to always deny the presence of Satan,” Juarez said. “It is evident that Satan is acting and acting terribly, more than one thinks.”

In the Middle Ages, mental disorders were often misdiagnosed as diabolical possessions. Now, the priests said, the opposite occurs.

“Psychology is where you begin . . . but there’s an area that science can’t explain,” Gagnon said. “I used to be very scientific, pragmatic. But I’ve changed my mind. I have just seen too much.”