Pope Leo XIV Warned Satanism Is on the Rise, Vatican Building an Army of Expert Exorcists

Satanism is on the rise around the world, claims a shadowy cabal of Christian clerics who gave Pope Leo XIV the chilling warning that an army of exorcists is needed to battle the onrushing wave of demonic evil.

According to reports emerging from the Vatican, the mysterious International Association of Exorcists (AIE) gave the terrifying warning of Lucifer’s growing sway to Chicago-born Leo in a March 13 papal powwow in Rome.

During the private audience, the AIE’s top two clerics — Bishop Karel Orlita and Father Francesco Bamonte — warned the pontiff about ominous and “increasingly widespread” incidents of demonic influence, as well as the “unprecedented challenges” facing priests, EWTN News reported.

People are being “seriously affected by the extraordinary action of the devil as a result of their involvement in occult sects,” they told Leo, per the report — adding that a trained exorcist is needed in every parish.

Sources say the dire meeting took place in the hallowed halls of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, the seat of Roman Catholic administrative power and home to the pope’s private quarters.

The Rome-based AIE — featured in the 2023 Russell Crowe movie The Pope’s Exorcist — was founded in 1994 by two Roman Catholic European priests to train clerics on how to expel Satan from the possessed through the ancient art of exorcism, sources say.

Globe has learned that the AIE’s warning comes amid other disturbing reports of Satan’s rise. In 2022, the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics reported a troubling 167 percent spike in people who identified as satanists from 2011 to 2021, along with an increase in parents who had named their child Lucifer, sources say.

Meanwhile, the Satanic Temple, a Salem, Massachusetts–based organization dedicated to secularism and personal liberty, says its ranks have swelled to over 100,000 since its founding in 2013, Oxygen.com reported.

At the same time, millions are leaving the Church, with the percentage of U.S. adults identifying as Catholic falling from 24 to 20 over roughly the last two decades, according to the Pew Research Center.

“The spread of occultism in its various forms, and of satanism, unfortunately opens doors and windows to the extraordinary action of the devil in today’s world,” Bamonte warned the pope.

“This can cause grave suffering in those who imprudently turn to these practices, through possible cases of possession, vexation, obsession or diabolical infestation.”