In a world that boasts of its technological rationality, where artificial intelligence promises to illuminate the future and social networks dictate collective morality, the XV International Congress of the International Association of Exorcists, held from September 15 to 20, 2025 in Rome, crudely reminds us of an uncomfortable truth: the evil one has not taken a vacation; he is a perverter and perverted.
With the blessing of Pope Leo XIV, who praised the «delicate and so necessary ministry of the exorcist» as an act of liberation in the name of Christ, about 300 priests from all continents gathered to dissect the cracks through which the unclean smoke of Satan filters.
For Mexico battered by spiritual and social crises, this event is not a medieval anachronism, but a wake-up call before a battle fought in the shadows of our postmodernity, especially among youth, vulnerable to esoteric fads and algorithms that disguise chaos as empowerment.
The congress, presided over by Monsignor Karel Orlita, Czech exorcist, did not limit itself to ancient rituals. It addressed with contemporary rigor the updated forms of temptation: from syncretic voodoo that drags entire communities toward demonic submission, through the New Age, that relativistic cocktail of theosophy and neognosticism that Father Andrés Esteban López Ruiz, Mexican exorcist, denounced as a holistic poison that dissolves Christian morality—, to parapsychology, that pseudoscience which, as Father Francesco Bamonte warned, leaves the faithful in the hands of mediums disguised as therapists.
But the climax came with the presentation by Beatrice Ugolini, criminologist advisor to the Research Group on Satanic and Idolater Rites (GRIS), who exposed how artificial intelligence fosters a «chaos magic»: algorithms that collect personal data for personalized divinations, digital necromancy, and magical-operational tools that invite individual experimentation with the occult. In an era where TikTok and «spiritual» meditation apps sell crystals and horoscopes as antidotes to millennial anxiety, wouldn’t it be the perfect Trojan horse that hides the devil?
Mexican youth, trapped in this whirlwind, is the preferred target. According to data from the National Survey on Drug Use Among Adolescents (ENCODAT) 2024, 25% of young people between 12 and 17 years old have experimented with esoteric or «alternative spiritual» practices, an increase of 15% in the last two years, driven by influencers who promote the New Age as «self-discovery.» But behind the gratitude mantras and tarot reels, lies a void that the demon exploits: obsessive-compulsive disorders misdiagnosed as mere psychological pathologies, diabolical obsessions that the Congress psychologist, Mauro Billetta, compared to psychiatric symptoms and a rise in suicides linked to occult sects.
Father John Szada, American psychologist and exorcist, insisted on unitary discernment: faith must integrate science, not reject it, to prevent the evil one from sneaking in through hasty diagnoses. In Mexico, where 40% of youth report depression according to the WHO, this confusion is lethal. Rampant secularization leaves us disarmed, turning online therapies into unwitting portals for preternatural influences.
And if the congress illuminated the global panorama, recent events in Mexico make it scandalously local. In the last three months, July and August of 2025, Satanism has not been a distant rumor, but a tangible outburst that cries out for exorcists. In Saltillo, Coahuila, the diocese alerted on August 2 about an active Santería sect, responsible for rituals with animal sacrifices and occult practices that have coincided with a surge in suicides among youth.
Just one week later, on July 31, an ecclesiastical statement explicitly linked these practices to an increase in tragic cases, where spiritism condemns the deceased to a fictional limbo, contrary to the Catholic doctrine of 1979. But the height came on August 25: the inauguration of the first satanic temple in Saltillo, baptized as «Guardians of Lucifer», a space open to «explore the depths of the left-hand path» that attracted dozens of curious people, many of them minors drawn by digital rebellion. This event, widely reported, is not isolated; in Boca del Río, Veracruz, another similar temple is announced for the coming weeks, in an area where Satanism grows like mushrooms.
The Rome congress urges us to act. In Mexico, where evil manifests in narco shootouts disguised as «peace» and in apps that sell digital pacts, the Church must raise its voice, not as an inquisitor, but as a mother who liberates. Youth does not need more Instagram filters; it needs evangelical discernment. As Cardinal Arthur Roche preached at the Congress: exorcism is a sign of ecclesial love. Ignore it, and the evil one will continue laughing in the resplendent shadows of our smartphones. It is time to invoke the victory of Christ, before chaos magic claims us completely.