Vatican: Pope did not perform an exorcism on boy

The Vatican has denied Pope Francis performed an exorcism after an Italian religious television channel said footage of the pontiff blessing a boy in a wheelchair showed he had.

“The Holy Father did not intend to perform any exorcism,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement, after the claims by TV 2000, which is owned by the Italian bishops’ conference.

“As he often does with sick and suffering people who are presented to him, he simply intended to pray for the suffering person,” Lombardi said.

The channel quoted exorcists saying there was “no doubt the Pope was either reciting a prayer for freeing from the devil or performing an exorcism”.

The footage recorded by Vatican television shows the pontiff briefly laying both hands on the boy’s head during a Pentecost ceremony on Sunday. The young man heaved deeply a half-dozen times, convulsed and shook, and then slumped in his wheelchair as Francis prayed over him.

Fuelling the speculation is Francis’s obsession with the devil, a frequent subject of the pontiff’s homilies.

TV 2000, which has previously aired claims that the Pope’s predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI also performed exorcisms, is to broadcast a special programme on Friday devoted to “the Pope’s struggle against the devil and his seductions”.

Exorcism is an ancient practice of driving out demons from a person or place, and exists in several religions, including in Catholicism.