Italy: Satanic sect performs ritual sacrifices

She was part of a group of seven people who have been ritually sacrificed during the past six years, by a sect known as “The Beasts of Satan”. Another member of this sect, Fabio Tollis, was also killed for refusing at the last moment to participate in the sacrifice of the young girl. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, the presumed leader of the group, a 27-year-old, was arrested at the beginning of the year, at the same time as another member, for the murder of a 27-year-old woman, who had disclosed the murder of Marino and Tollis.

According to experts, there are currently 650 satanic sects active in Italy. The association Favis, which fights against sects, says that former followers who want to leave are forced to go abroad and take on a new identity.

Interviewed by the weekly paper L’Espresso on June 11, the exorcist of the diocese of Rome, Fr. Gabriele Amorth declared: “The Church has gone from one extreme to the other. In trying to make up for the folly of hunting witches who were burnt instead of being exorcised, she has eliminated everything, the Devil and exorcism. The result of this is that there are entire Catholic regions which no longer have a single exorcist: Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Switzerland,” stating however, that in Italy there are 160 in number.

For the 80-year-old priest, who has been practicing in Rome since 1986, the Italian bishops and the Roman Curia are incompetent on this matter: “It has been a long time since either angels, demons or exorcisms, or anything concerning sins against the First Commandment, You shall have no other God but me, in other words, magic, spiritualism and Satanism, have been studied in seminaries.”

“The Roman Curia has given free rein to a new ritual, which is a disaster for us exorcists” – on January 26, 1999, the Holy See published a document entitled De Exorcismis et supplicationibus quibusdam, establishing a new rite of exorcism - “It prevents us from carrying out exorcisms without the certainty beforehand that the person is diabolically possessed, something which can be known only in the course of the exorcism itself.” Fr. Amorth added that he was still using the old ritual, which remains valid.

“An undeniable symptom of possession is a deep-rooted aversion to all that is sacred,” he explained, also citing the ability to speak in unknown languages, the manifestation of a superhuman strength and levitation, phenomena which manifest themselves only during exorcism.

“Satan is always at work, ordinarily in doing his utmost to induce man to sin, and he is behind every evil realized, but it is certainly man who freely decides his own actions. Then there is also an extraordinary action of the Evil One, and that is diabolical possession.”

If for the Roman priest, cases of possession are rare, with the majority of people sent to exorcists actually suffering from a psychological illness, it often happens that a person becomes possessed after entering a satanic sect. “If it is easy to enter a satanic sect, it is extremely difficult to get out,” and Fr. Amorth specified that in certain cases, this may go as far as risking one’s own life.

There are two types of Satanism: the high Satanism of those who worship the devil, and have their priests who celebrate black masses, and the low Satanism of those who do not believe in the personal existence of Satan, but who damn themselves by actions which are obscene and against nature. For Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the second type is the more dangerous. According to the experts on the subject, Satanism of the second type is insidiously penetrating the discos and the internet, encouraging drug-taking, and the listening to and producing of gothic and black metal music.