The Vatican's chief exorcist...

...is a priest named Father Gabriele Amorth. Chief exorcist? How many are there? Does he have a staff? I guess they must be chasing demons all over the world.

According to the Holy See's chief exorcist, "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican."

Inside the Vatican? How much wrongdoing could there be inside the Vatican?

[Amorth] says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession.

70,000! What the--! My son's frat house could take some pointers from the Vatican! What do you suppose they're doing in there?

He claimed that [an] example of satanic behavior was the Vatican "cover-up" over the deaths in 1998 of Alois Estermann, the then commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife and Corporal Cedric Tornay, a Swiss Guard, who were all found shot dead. "They covered up everything immediately," he said.

M-M-Murder?

A remarkably swift Vatican investigation concluded that Corporal Tornay had shot the commander and his wife and then turned his gun on himself after being passed over for a medal.

He was that distraught over a medal? That must have been some medal! (I knew guys like that in the Scouts.) I have a suggestion for the Vatican; next time there's any question, give the guy the medal!

Father Amorth, who has just published Memoirs of an Exorcist, a series of interviews with the Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti, said that the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981 had been the work of the Devil, as had an incident last Christmas when a mentally disturbed woman threw herself at Pope Benedict XVI at the start of Midnight Mass, pulling him to the ground.

I wonder if the Vatican would ever look into the Cubs' collapse back in 1969.

Father Amorth told La Repubblica that the devil was "pure spirit, invisible. But he manifests himself with blasphemies and afflictions in the person he possesses. He can remain hidden, or speak in different languages, transform himself or appear to be agreeable. At times he makes fun of me."

Can't imagine why.

He said it sometimes took six or seven of his assistants to hold down a possessed person. Those possessed often yelled and screamed and spat out nails or pieces of glass, which he kept in a bag. "Anything can come out of their mouths – finger-length pieces of iron, but also rose petals."

Uh huh.

He is the president of honor of the Association of Exorcists.

What do you suppose those conventions are like? Not exactly Ralph Kramden and the Water Buffaloes in Atlantic City.