Pope blames devil for Church divisions

VATICAN CITY: The devil is alive and well and working overtime to undermine the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis says.

In fact, the pope is so convinced that Satan is to blame for the sexual abuse crisis and deep divisions racking the Church that he has asked Catholics around the world to recite a special prayer every day in October to try to beat him back.

"The Church must be saved from the attacks of the malign one, the great accuser and at the same time be made ever more aware of its guilt, its mistakes, and abuses committed in the present and the past," Francis said in a message on Sept. 29. Since he was elected in 2013, Francis has made clear that he believes the devil to be real. In a document in April on holiness in the modern world, Francis mentioned the devil more than a dozen times.

"We should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea. The Church has recently been hit by one sexual abuse scandal after another, from Germany, to the United States, to Chile.

At the same time, a deepening polarisation between conservatives and liberals in the Church has played out on social media. Francis’ use of the term "the great accuser" to describe Satan hit a raw nerve with one of the pope’s harshest conservative critics, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Vatican’s former ambassador to Washington.

In an 11-page statement published on Aug 26, Viganò launched an unprecedented broadside by a Church insider against the pope and a long list of Vatican and US Church officials.