Angel craze hits the Vatican

The angel craze hit the US a few years ago. With it came renewed interest in the influence of angels in human affairs.

“Its took us a couple of years, but we’re catching up,” says a Vatican bookstore employee. One of the hottest sellers is a pocket book called Advice from your Guardian Angel.

“It’s the angel season right now,” says an employee at Coletti’s bookstore. “Before, nobody believes in them, now everybody does. I wonder what the angels think about that.”

What do church officials think of this angel craze?

On Easter Monday, a day dedicated to angels in remembrance at the one who announced the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Vatican Radio tried to respond to the growing interest and confusion about angels.

“Angels truly exist, just as God exist,” said Fr Gabriele Amorth, a Vatican expert on angels and demons. He described angels as “servants and messengers of God” and as purely spiritual creatures, personal and immortal, having intelligence and will.

Do they look like chubby winged children?

“That’ the problem,” Fr Amorth said. Because angels are pure spirits, we can only imagine them according to our own ideas which may not be realistic.

Some Vatican officials, however, see the current angel craze as being not quite in line with church teachings.

A new book, Prayers to the Angels: For Health and Healing, suggest that angels are a form of astral energy that can be tapped through recited prayers. The book has, for example, a four page prayer for people with hip problems. They are asked to recite this prayer aloud for eight days to the angel Seheiah.

The book has different angels and different, toothache, the common cold, etc.

A few years ago, Vatican officials came down hard on an angel cult in Australia which revolved around a woman’s alleged vision of a world of angels, each with specific names and specific tasks.

The Vatican told the group to end its activities, which it described as “foreign to Holy Scripture.”