Paul evidently thought he was exorcising some kind of evil spirit, but this must have been all in his mind. What he was actually doing, the bishop surmised, was depriving the slave girl of “her gift of spiritual awareness.” Paul is filled with prejudice, she thinks, and so does something sinister by refusing to recognize as beautiful or holy the spirituality confronting him in the possessed young woman. “So he tries to destroy it.” … Paul’s arrogance, misogyny, and narrow-mindedness make him oppose an alternate expression of the divine.

On Pentecost Sunday all hell broke loose in Rome. Following Mass that day, the unpredictable Pope Francis laid hands on a demon-possessed man from Mexico and prayed for him. The YouTube video of this encounter was flashed around the world, and the story caught fire: Is Pope Francis an exorcist? The Holy Father’s Vatican handlers were quick to deny such. The pope simply offered a prayer of deliverance for the distraught man, it was said. Exorcism in the Catholic Church is a sacramental, a sacred act producing a spiritual effect, which must be done according to the officially prescribed Rite of Exorcism. And yet what the pope did on Pentecost Sunday in St. Peter’s Square was more than a simple prayer for someone to get better. It looked for all the world like a real act of spiritual warfare.

The scene now shifts to South America, the continent where Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born and has spent most of his life. The place: All Saints Church, in Steenrijk, Curaçao, in the Anglican Diocese of Venezuela. The date: May 12, 2013, one week before the pope’s exorcism-like event in Rome. The preacher: The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church (formerly known as ECUSA). When she was elected to her post in 2006, Father Richard John Neuhaus described it as an occasion of great sadness. His reaction reflected neither personal animus nor schadenfreudlich glee. Rather, he saw her accession to this high office as likely to deepen the pain and division within the Christian community. Sadly, he was right.

In Venezuela, Bishop Katharine also confronted a demon—the one found in her sermon text for the day, Acts 16:16-24. This is Luke’s account of Paul’s exorcism of a manic slave girl in Philippi. The bishop’s sermon was really a polemic against what she called, in postmodernist lingo, “discounting and devaluing difference.” This is where the slave girl comes in. The bishop noted that Paul was “annoyed” by the antics of the possessed girl. “Annoyed” is the RSV’s translation of the verb diaponeomai, which might be better rendered “deeply moved” (NIV) or “grieved” (KJV).

Paul is certainly more than a little irritated here, but his anger is not directed against the oppressed slave girl who is both in the grips of an evil spirit and exploited by greedy pimps. Paul’s anger is like that of Jesus at the grave of Lazarus where “a deep anger welled up within him” (John 11:33, MSG). Jesus was angry in the face of tragic death; Paul grieved in the presence of a daughter of God controlled by the Evil One. Was that what Pope Francis felt on Pentecost Sunday—a source of evil so malicious and strong that it could only be overcome by the greater power of Jesus Christ? When the devil is on the prowl, niceness will not do. Confrontation is required.
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