St. Michael's Church

• The film’s protagonist, Father Gabriele Amorth (Russell Crowe), is based on a real Catholic exorcist who was a founding member of the very organisation condemning the movie as inaccurate.
• So cinema-goers had fair warning that it would be far from uncontentious.
• Add into the mix secret chambers hiding cobweb-strewn skeletons and dark secrets and it’s squarely in Temple of Doom territory.
• These Hollywood depictions can lead to real world dangers – as tragedies like the murder of Victoria Climbié in 2000 prove all too graphically.

How true to life is The Pope’s Exorcist?

• The International Association of Exorcists took some time to gain papal endorsement from John Paul II.
• Even now it is recognised as a “private association of the Christian faithful” rather than a group coordinated by ecclesiastical authorities.
• An African bishop (Cornell John) is portrayed as supportive of Father Amorth and a counterbalance to a sceptical American cardinal.

Demons and the modern church

• In the contemporary world, the Roman Catholic Church has to pay regard to the benefits of modern science and the empirical method.
• The church has even sometimes helped to foster this over the years, for example through Gregor Mendel, the monk who laid the foundation for modern genetics.
• Yet the church has also made space for those who argue that this is not the only lens through which to view the world.
• Christians including Roman Catholics differ as to whether the “invisible” might mean atoms, demons, or both.

• On entry to Newcastle’s The Lock-Up contemporary art space is a textile artwork by institutional child sexual abuse survivor and artist Elizabeth Seysener.
• This exhibition, titled Loud Sky, addresses institutional child sexual abuse through the eyes of five professional artists commissioned to work with the local survivor community.
• Read more:
  Royal commission recommends sweeping reforms for Catholic Church to end child abuse

Community art works

• In 2022, the Loud Sky project ran community art workshops for anyone impacted by institutional child sexual abuse.
• Participants enrolled in painting, drawing and photography classes with experienced art therapists.
• A second community arts program, the Field of Flowers, has been “planted” at Christ Church Cathedral and Sacred Heart Cathedral.

Listening to survivors

• Each artist worked in collaboration with the survivor community, mostly members of the Clergy Abused Network, the central survivor support group in the Hunter region.
• Damien Linnane asked survivors to bring in a treasured object accompanied by a story of the object.
• Clare Weeks invited survivors to take a piece of paper and imagine a word that reflected their sense of resilience and hope.

The power of art

• Visual art can be an important means by which affected communities come to understand the impacts of harmful events in creative and regenerative ways.
• Art helps process trauma and plays a vital role in restorative justice and truth telling.
• Through art, we can remain awake to the impacts of child sexual abuse and listen to the stories of those who survived such harm as children.

• The Sisters of the Valley were given substantial help by the SBA in the form of low-interest loans in order to survive the pandemic.
• Because the recent floods and disasters happened before the business could recover from a pandemic economy, they are now being locked out of further help.
• The SBA help is based on being healthy before the disaster, but there was a disaster before this disaster, and they are not looking back more than three years.
• For the sisters, if they had healthy financials, they wouldn’t be knocking at the door of the SBA.

• Insights reveal priorities, concerns, and expectations of church leaders, so ministry leaders can explore the latest digital trends and see data-driven insights about the future of church technology.
• In fact, more than half of churches (53%) consider themselves progressive when it comes to technology adoption and usage today.
• “Most of the time we hear about how the church is resistant to change and to the modernization of technology.
• Church-specific tools are on the rise: 86% of church leaders report they do not want more technology tools.