The would-be exorcists blamed the internet and atheism for what they see as a spike in evil, but the urgency evident in the course also seemed to have something to do with a growing conservative view that the church has gone astray under Pope Francis, and that end times had drawn nigh.

The pope recently had conservative heads spinning when he was quoted, incorrectly according to the Vatican, by an Italian reporter with credibility issues as not believing in hell. “Beyond what is tolerable,” the American cardinal Raymond Burke, a leader of the conservative resistance to Francis, said at the time.

In the seminar on Monday, Cardinal Simoni reported dramatic successes. Asked by one priest how he knew if an exorcism had worked, he responded, “Ah, you can see it immediately,” explaining that one possessed person went from jumping up and down and “keeping three or four men busy” to rising with a “joyous smile.”

Turning back to the topic at hand, Father Cárdenas warned that black magic can be transmitted through screens (“American films are also a problem”), that demons enter the body “through the back of the brain,” and that early traumas, like sexual abuse, can make a person vulnerable to homosexuality and the demons who, in grave cases, cause suicidal or violent tendencies and need to be chased away.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/world/europe/exorcism-catholic-church.html