No doubt about it: The devil is real, and is everywhere.
The view is shared by Father Vincenzo Taraborelli, a 79-year-old priest from Rome who has been performing exorcisms for the past 27 years, The Christian Post reported.
He said the clearest proof that the devil is alive is the existence of the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group, which has committed numerous atrocities that could only be the work of the devil himself.
The Catholic priest said the devil's existence is written in the Gospel. He said "you only need to see how the world is nowadays" to realise that the devil is not a make-believe character.
"It has never been this bad. These violent acts [by ISIS] are not human. So terrible," he added.
Taraborelli said he personally get to see the devil face to face during the exorcism rites he performs.
One time, he told the BBC, he was asked to exorcise a woman who fell under a spell from a Satanist after she refused his advances.
He said the woman went into a trace as he started to pray for her. "She would blurt out insults, blasphemies. I quickly understood she was possessed," he said.
"As the rite continued, she started feeling worse and worse. So when I told the devil: 'In the name of Jesus, I order you to go away,' she started to vomit little metal pins, five at a time.
"Aside from pins she would also vomit hair braids, little stones, pieces of wood. It sounds like something from another world, right? Instead, it's something from this world."
Taraborelli said the task that exorcists perform is too much to take for young priests. "I told the bishop that I can't find anyone willing to do this. Many of them are scared. Even priests can be scared. It's a difficult life," he said.
He said even at his advanced age, he often performs as many as 30 exorcisms a day.
A fellow exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, who claimed to have performed as many as 160,000 exorcisms, died in September at the age of 91 in Rome.
