(LifeSiteNews) — The International Association of Exorcists (AIE) recently published a book warning that Halloween, as practiced today, is “closely connected” to witchcraft and satanism, and urging Christians to sanctify the holiday with All Saints feast celebrations.
The Dark Charm of Halloween dismantles the idea that Halloween is a “playful and innocent party,” and shows how it is in fact a revival of the Celtic pagan feast of Samhain, during which “magical rituals” were performed and humans were likely sacrificed, according to co-author Father Francesco Bamonte, vice president of the AIE.
In an article about the book, which was written in Italian together with AIE spokesman Alberto Castaldini, Bamonte points out that Halloween has come full circle from the pagan roots of its traditions. Now, many years after certain practices of Samhain were integrated into the Christian celebration of All Saints Day, including its eve celebrations (hence the name All Hallows’ Eve, shortened to “Halloween”), paganism has seeped back into Halloween celebrations.
The American commercialization of Halloween “increasingly emptied” the holiday of its faith content, so that the celebration “found itself rooted in magic, horror, and death,” “unlike Christianity that is rooted in God,” giving “serenity, hope, peace, and joy,” Bamonte wrote.
The exorcist priest suggested that this distancing of Halloween from Christianity has paved the way for the festival’s more prominent, widespread connections with “dark realities such as witchcraft and satanism.”
Bamonte noted that the “main feast” of satanists’ celebrations, in fact, is “precisely Halloween,” which is cause for caution, lest people participate in Halloween practices that make themselves “more vulnerable to both the ordinary and extraordinary action of the devil.”
“Even the preparatory period for Halloween becomes a privileged moment of contact of children and young people with sects and groups of the world of occultism, often masked by cultural associations,” Bamonte wrote.
Disturbingly, certain children’s websites where “horror scenarios are described, even have links that directly access satanism and black magic sites,” according to the exorcist. Local governments are also supporting potentially dangerous Halloween activities including “spirit sessions at the theater” in Foggia, guided tours of crime scenes in Bergamo, and a “witches’ festival” in Corinaldo di Ancona.
“These are just a few examples” in Italy, Bamonte noted. In Ireland, faithful Catholics are currently campaigning against a pagan festival rooted in Samhain and the occult, which is being celebrated at Halloween time with the backing of local councils and the Irish government’s tourism body. The Catholics campaigners are warning that the festival “threatens the Catholic faith and Christian culture of Ireland.”
“Halloween is also full of symbologies linked to the world of horror, death, the occult and the demonic,” wrote Bamonte, adding that countless crimes, including “blasphemy and sacrilege against the faith,” have been committed in honor of this festival.
The exorcist called for a revival of, and appreciation for the feast of All Saints Day, to be celebrated in lieu of paganized Halloween festivals. He recommended that adults and children help create saint costumes, and that priests bless these clothes on the Sunday before October 31. Bamonte also suggested that Feasts of the Saints be held for children in church halls, with re-enactments of their lives, games, gifts, and snacks, as well as torchlight processions and prayer vigils, with worship of the Blessed Sacrament.
He also suggested that the “communion that binds us to all the Saints and our deceased” be emphasized by priests during sermons in the days before October 31, as well as “how important it is for us Catholics to celebrate our holy friends” whose “intercession can obtain many graces from us” and who are “waiting for our prayers.