Learning to wrestle demons
(left) performing a ritual in Santos Lugares, BUENOS AIRES: Manuel Acuna sprinkles holy water and waves his crucifix. Then, he lays his hand on the sweating, shrieking woman before him.
This is not a horror movie. It is a real-life mass at Acuna’s evangelical exorcism school — thought to be one of the first in Latin America.
The bespectacled 54-year-old Lutheran pastor trains laypeople as “exorcism consultants”.
“They study the devil’s character and how he works. An exorcism consultant will be able to determine when there is a case of a demonic presence, possession, oppression, obsession or curse,” he said.
Acuna has a passionate following. Hundreds flock to his Good Shepherd Church on exorcism nights. His 35 students pay US$47 (RM207) a month for a three-year, part-time course in “Parapsychology, Angelology and Demonology”.
“The mystery of the unseen provokes fascination, but also criticism.
“I have been called all kinds of names. But I didn’t choose to be an exorcist. It is a calling from God,” he said.
Photographs on a wall show Acuna meeting celebrities and even Pope Francis, a fellow Argentine.
But unlike Francis, Acuna himself is not Catholic. He is a Protestant bishop from the New York-based Association of Independent Evangelical
recently. Lutheran Churches.
Clergy at four other Lutheran churches have distanced themselves from Acuna and his school.
“We have to ask ourselves how much of what is advertised is true, and how much is business?” said Pastor Esteban Tronovsky, who believes exorcism cannot be taught.
Acuna said he had performed some 1,200 exorcisms and was able to recall the first.
In 2001, a teenage girl started writhing and speaking in tongues during a mass.
“On that day, I introduced myself to the devil,” Acuna said, adding that being an exorcist became his way of life. AFP