Catholic University Offers Classes in Satanism

The Vatican's exorcism rule book warns priests the devil "goes around like a roaring lion looking for souls to devour", but such is the perceived rise in his worship that a Catholic university is offering clerics classes to better identify their foe.

The two-month course at Regina Apostolorum, one of Rome's most prestigious pontifical universities, has arisen out of concern in the Vatican over a series of high profile court cases linking ritualised murders to Satanism.

In one case in Italy, seven people believed to belong to a satanic sect were ordered to stand trial for their alleged role in three killings.

Prosecutors alleged that one of the victims, a 19-year-old girl stabbed to death in 1998, may have been targeted because her killers believed she was a personification of the Virgin Mary.

In addition to the three murders, the sect is suspected of having forced two of its members to take their own lives. According to an Italian parliamentary group, there are as many as 1,000 satanic sects in the country.

The courses, starting today, will deal with demonology, the presence of the notion of the devil in sacred texts, and the pathology and medical treatment of people suffering from possession.

The Vatican is also concerned about a growing number of young people who use the internet to develop personal forms of Satanism out of sight of the police units monitoring the more established sects.

"It's a more spontaneous and hidden phenomenon, a problem of loneliness and isolation, a problem of emptiness, that is fulfilled by the values of Satanism," one of the teachers, Carlo Climati, a specialist on youth culture and Satanism, told the Associated Press.

In 1999, the Vatican issued its first rule book since 1614 on how to drive out devils. Running to 90 pages, the leather bound De Exorcismis et supplicationibus quibusdam identified "speaking in unknown languages, discerning distant or hidden things, and displaying a [unnatural] physical strength" as signs of demonic possession.

Unlike its seventeenth century predecessor, De Exorcismis warned against confusing possession with mental illness.

Mr Climati said his Satanism course would "explain how to distinguish between someone who is ill and requiring medical care, and one is possessed by demons".

Pope John Paul II is a fervent believer that the devil, who he calls a "cosmic liar and murderer", is a real presence in the world and has personally carried out exorcisms. In a book called I miei sei Papi, the late Cardinal Jacques Martin recounted how in 1982 the then Bishop of Spoleto brought to the Pope a woman thought to be possessed.

"From outside, we could hear her screams. The Pope delivered several exorcisms, but in vain. Then he said, 'Tomorrow, I shall say Mass for you', and she suddenly became normal again."