Pope Pius V on Spiritual warfare

Through those means, and also by commanding evil spirits to leave, or exorcising them, in Christ's name

THE POSITION

Both, and the second is an office of the Church. The Sixth Petition gives the ordinary means: Satan is overcome "by prayer, labor, watching, fasting, continence and chastity," and "the devil flees from those who resist him." But exorcism is built into the sacraments: the baptismal rite includes an exorcism "used to expel the devil", and exorcist is the third of the minor orders, ordained with a book of exorcisms and the power to lay hands on the possessed, "whether baptised or catechumen."

7 OTHERS HOLD THIS

ABOUT THIS FIGURE

Michele Ghislieri, a Dominican friar and inquisitor, was pope from 1566 to 1572 and carried the Council of Trent's decrees into practice. Under his authority came the Roman Catechism (1566), the reformed Breviary (1568) and Missal (1570), and the bull Ex omnibus afflictionibus (1567) on the teaching of Michael Baius; he also named Thomas Aquinas a Doctor of the Church. He wrote little theology of his own, so this entry rests on what he promulgated: the Roman Catechism, read in the McHugh and Callan translation, a commission's work issued by his order, and the 1567 bull in Deferrari's translation of Denzinger.