DeathWatch: We Have an Exorcist!

    I found this to be extremely fascinating when I saw it on Yahoo News the other day, and so I decided to share it with you.
    As you may or may not know, Pope Francis has a bit of a problem with the devil. That shouldn't be all that surprising, considering he's, you know, the pope, but he tends to mention the Lord of the Flies quite a lot--on March 14th, in his first homily as pope, he warned the cardinals in the Sistene Chapel that "he who doesn't pray to the Lord prays to the Devil." Since then, he has said similar things a handful of times--but recently, it seems he did something more than talk about it.
    At the end of one of his masses, Francis blessed several wheelchair-bound members of the faith, as per usual, but one of them had traveled to Rome from Mexico and was, according to the Reverend Juan Rivas, who brought him there, possessed by the devil. When Francis put his hands on the man's head--note: That's a typical position for an exorcist to use, according to the Reverend Giulio Maspero--the man "heaved deeply a half-dozen times, shook, then slumped in his wheelchair." (Yahoo) 
    Maybe AP English has finally cracked my sanity and I'm seeing symbols everywhere, but besides the fact that Francis used a typical exorcist position and the results that came of that, let me point out that the man heaved six times. Perhaps that's nothing more than symbolism or a coincidence, but it's a--ha ha--hell of a coincidence, considering the biblical connotation surrounding that number. 
    The Vatican, of course, is downplaying the incident, stating that Francis "didn't intend to perform any exorcism. But as he often does for the sick or suffering, he simply intended to pray for someone who was suffering who was presented to him." (Yahoo) However, the Reverend Gabriele Amorth, "a leading exorcist for the diocese of Rome, said he performed a lengthy exorcism of his own on the man Tuesday morning and ascertained he was possessed by four separate demons."
    So, did he really do it? There is also speculation that he "did not mean" to perform an exorcism but only a prayer to "liberate" the man from the control of the demons or devil, but even that would be astounding in itself.
    And while reading that article I learned something else that's pretty damn amazing, too: "Italian newspapers noted that the late Pope John Paul II performed an exorcism in 1982 — near the same spot where Francis prayed over the young disabled man Sunday."