MANILA, Philippines – When the father of Venzon Evangelista saw what his son’s killers had done to him, he cried out in anguish, “Even Satan would have to be afraid of those men!”

The devil is alive and well, as successive popes have been reminding the flock, and now, as if by purpose and design – after the Vatican’s chief exorcist, Fr. Gabriele Amorth, sounded the call for more exorcists – the media cannot seem to get away from stories, reports, and movies about demonic possession.

All within the same time frame, it would appear. Fr. Jose Francisco (Jocis) Syquia, the only exorcist authorized by the Archdiocese of Manila, launched his book Exorcist: A Spiritual Journey, early this month. In short order, the trailer of Anthony Hopkins’ latest movie, “The Rite,” was on YouTube, followed days later by the same on the big screen. Eerily enough, the same cinemas showing that trailer were running the feature-length “Exorcismus, The Exorcism of Emma Evans.”

Father Syquia’s book is not a sequel to his first, Exorcism: Encounters with the Paranormal and the Occult, but it is the first in a series of three that he intends to write to help healers in their mission of deliverance.

What the devil is this obsession with possession? To quote the author’s mother, Letty Syquia, “The book has sold 3,000 copies.”