The meeting took place from Aug. 31-Sept. 2 and was held at the headquarters of the Mexican episcopal conference. Participants included Bishops, exorcist priests (appointed or authorized), as well as a number of other priests, women religious, lay assistants to exorcists, persons with experience in prayer of liberation, doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists interested in being part of liberation teams.
At the opening Mass, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, archbishop of Mexico, said that «we are in a crucial time for the Church. We must use the Word to denounce all that is not of God: witchcraft, spiritualism, magic folk medicine, religion of African origin, esotericism, horoscopes, fortune-telling, tarot cards, alleged occult sciences, Gnosticism, freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, materialist and animist philosophies, etc.
“However, something even more relevant is that, in certain cities of the world, there are practices of Satan worship,» he said.
«We are also faced with satanic actions such as New Age, which tries to attract people to false ways of thinking and living, and to believe not in the personal God who has revealed himself to us, but in an impersonal god that is identified with this material world of which we are a part and, for the same reason, wish to make us believe that we ourselves are God.»
«There are those who wish to solve their problems, illnesses, pains, and sufferings by following an apparent and superficial path without establishing a personal relationship with God,» he indicated.
The cardinal invited the participants to put Christ at the center of their lives, «who with his passion, death, and resurrection, through the cross, defeated Satan.»
The meeting was organized in particular by the General Coordination of Exorcists of the Archdiocese of Mexico.
Father Pedro Mendoza Pantoja coordinates the work of eight exorcists, one for each territorial vicariate of the archdiocese.
