Vatican exorcist: Hitler Knew the Devil

Did Hitler have an unusually intimate familiarity with the devil? That’s what Rome’s chief exorcist Father Gabriel Amorth says — and Pope Benedict at one point, seemed to agree. The devil gets more attention in the popular culture at Halloween than at any other time in the year. But it’s not often one hears the question put so specifically.

When Rome’s chief exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, told Vatican Radio in August that he believed Hitler and Stalin were “certainly” possessed by the devil, it made headlines around the world.

Regarded as the Church’s most experienced and prominent exorcist, Father Amorth warned Vatican Radio listeners Aug. 27 that the devil can possess not only individuals but also entire groups and populations.

“I am convinced that the Nazis were possessed by the devil,” he said. “If one thinks of what was committed by people like Stalin or Hitler, certainly they were possessed by the devil. This is seen in their actions, in their behavior and in the horrors they committed.”

After his comments were made public, some accused the veteran exorcist of making excuses for the atrocities perpetrated by the two infamous dictators, and essentially of defending them by using the “devil-made-me-do-it” excuse.

“It absolves the Nazis from their crimes,” Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles told “NBC News.” “It says they’re really great people. Up in heaven, some celestial evil angel caused it all.”

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