00:04that technically he is the exorcist. It's a reminiscent of chapter 9 of Luke's Gospel in verse 1, where Jesus sends out the 12, and gives them authority over all unclean spirits. So the bishop, by virtue of his office, would have that carerism, and then at his discretion, he can distow this carerism on one or more of his priest. So yeah, every diocese technically does have an exorcist. When I was appointed back in 2005, I became one of only 12 Catholic exorcists in the United States, and now today that number has grown to more than 300. Because the Church recognizes that if she does not address the growing trend of evil, then people are going to turn to the wrong sources to find the help that they need. We're living in an age when faith is in decline, and I like to remind people that faith in God leads us in one direction, and the lack of faith leads us in another. And there are a lot of people in the Western world today who may have grown up in traditional Christian homes. Maybe they were baptized and whatnot. They went to Sunday school, but now they identify as being an atheist, spiritual, but usually that's a reference not to anything of God, but the things of this world. So there is a growing increase, if you will, in demonic activity. And the reason is not because I I believe the devil is up to his game, but because more people today are willing to play the devil's game. So when people abandon their faith and they move outside of the realm of God, they are putting themselves within the realm of the evil one. Amen. Oh my gosh. Amen. Wow. Who says, who says Catholic priests can lay it down, strap it on, come on. Wow. You know what I'm loving right now? I'm loving there's a bunch of judgmental Protestants. We're part of my thing. We're going like, damn, damn, this guy is like cracking my nuts. Let alone nuts. That is fantastic. Wow, dude, man, you didn't, I even asked you, I said, you want to go by father, you want to go by Vincent or my father, Vinci said, you don't care. I just love the spirit about you, father, father, Vincent, Vince. I still feel uncomfortable, like, you know, figuring out the right nomenclature. But I tell you, you just nailed so many people who I personally know who have quote unquote, deconstructed their faith. They've, first of all, it wasn't that Christianity was proven nonsensical. It was that they were proven unfaithful. You didn't just come across some scientific thing. You were baptized and you walked away from your vows. You're unfaithful. And the number of people I've seen who've walked away from their faith and have walked into much more personal tragedy, difficulty, it's really astounding. I have to think probably some of that
03:04as you walked into, or you, I don't know, you walked away from the covering of God, you walked into more darkness. What do you think about that? Are you seeing these things? Absolutely. And I think the reality is the devil has a greater hold on people who have walked away from their faith. So there's a difference between demonic activity in the apostate world, meaning people who knew the truth of Jesus Christ, and then walked away from that truth, and people who've never heard it for the first time. 2017, I had the opportunity to spend two weeks in South Africa doing exorcism ministry. People there who had never been baptized, who had never come to Christ, who were possessed, when the exorcisms were done, they were immediate and effective. But in the Western world, where people have walked away from their faith, it seems that exorcism prayers have to be repeated more than once, because these people knew the truth and they rejected it, and somehow that gives the devil a deeper hold on these folks.