Pope’s Chief Exorcist Calls Harry Potter “King of Darkness”

Sep 05, 2006

Posted by: Melissa Anelli

Uncategorized

Many Leaky readers have emailed us with links to the recent news that Rev. Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist for Pope Benedict XVI said in an interview with Vatican Radio last week that (fictional character) Harry Potter is “the king of darkness, the devil.” Amorth, president of the International Association of Exorcists, also “compared the Potter character to dictators Stalin and Hitler, saying they were possessed by the devil.”

Update:
We have a short follow up for you now on the above comments. Upon further investigation, we can report that these comments were not made in a recent radio interview as attributed in some of the press reports, but rather in late December of 2001. Rev. Amorth did appear on a recent radio interview with the Vatican, and in the first of the press reports, his previous comments were mentioned as being “in the past.” However, later press reports did not attribute the comments to the correct timeframe, and it appeared in print as seemingly new comments on Harry Potter. While we do not know if Rev. Amorth still maintains his negative position on the books, and he feasibly could have said the same exact thing five years later, the only source on record dates those comments to 2001. In other words, old news!





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