Interview With Father Mendoza Pantoja of Archdiocese of Mexico

MEXICO CITY, SEPT. 17, 2004 (Zenit) - Satan exists and his strategy is to confuse, says the exorcist of the Archdiocese of Mexico.

Father Pedro Mendoza Pantoja was one of the organizers of Mexico's first National Meeting of Exorcists and Auxiliaries of Liberation, held Aug. 31-Sept. 2 at the headquarters of the bishops' conference. The meeting drew 500 participants.

Father Mendoza Pantoja coordinates the work of eight exorcists, one for each of the territorial vicariates of that diocese. He spoke of his work with us. Part 2 of this interview appears Monday.

Q: Who is an exorcist?

Father Mendoza Pantoja: He can be a bishop or a priest designated by him, who by the mandate of Jesus Christ and in the name of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit recites a prayer in which, in an imperative way, in the case of diabolic possession, orders Satan to depart from the one possessed and leave him in total freedom, or in a deprecating form, that is, of intercession or supplication, asking that, by the precious blood of Christ and the intercession of the Virgin Mary, a person, place, house or object be liberated from every demonic influence, be it infestation, obsession or oppression.

Q: Can anyone be an exorcist?

Father Mendoza Pantoja: No. According to the Gospel, Christ enriched his apostles with charismatic gifts when he sent them to evangelize.

In Matthew 10:1 it says: "And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity." See also Matthew 16:17-18.

With that authority, it corresponds to bishops, successors of the apostles, to exercise this ministry of expelling demons. But, according to Canon 1172, they can designate, to exercise this ministry in a stable manner or for a special case, a "pious, learned, prudent priest with integrity of life." This is true for diabolic possessions and, therefore, for exorcism itself, also called solemn exorcism.

But every priest through his ordination participates in the priesthood of Christ and, with him, has the mission to liberate the faithful from all obsessions, oppressions or demonic influences, with deprecating prayers of intercession and supplication, with evangelization and administration of the sacraments, primarily penance and the Eucharist.

Similarly, all priests are exorcists in regard to the pastoral endeavor of liberation within their mission to evangelize, and this is true, by the command of Christ; he does not need to be designated to carry out so-called minor exorcism. Lay people cannot be exorcists.

Q: The meeting you organized also gathered "Auxiliaries of Liberation." Who are these persons and what do they do?

Father Mendoza Pantoja: Auxiliaries of Liberation are: priests who do not have the character of official exorcists; doctors; psychiatrists; religious; and lay people who help the exorcist priest in discernment or in the exercise of his ministry, either with prayer of intercession or in different eventualities.

Priests help with prayer of liberation and the laity with prayer of intercession. A priest who is not an official exorcist can carry out a minor exorcism, also called prayer of liberation, helped in turn by all the laity who support him in discernment and with prayers of intercession. The laity cannot recite prayers of liberation.

Q: If I am not mistaken, this was Mexico's first meeting of exorcists and one of the first of these characteristics in the world. It seems that in the last 40 years the figure of the exorcist was disappearing. Is this an impression that corresponds with reality?

Father Mendoza Pantoja: Indeed, it is. The causes are varied, but we could say that they are included in the great challenge that the second half of the last century presented to the Church in her task of evangelization.

In the first half, Satan attacked humanity in the field of ideas and thought: rationalism, materialism, Gnosticism, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, sectarianism, Socialism, Marxism-Leninism, etc., which separate man from God. On one hand, the negation of a personal God and also the negation of the existence of Satan as a personal being, exchanging the true God for an impersonal god that identifies itself with this material world and reducing Satan to a mere symbol.

Such an influence also infected our theologians, who in recent times no longer spoke of the devil or the angels.

But as a counterbalance, man felt nostalgia for God. His search for the supernatural, as a solution to the problems afflicting him because of his separation from God, made him fall into the clutches of the New Age, which with its deceitful spiritualities and fictitious ...