In order to better prepare priests to exercise their mission, a national center for the formation of exorcists is being set up in Katowice, Poland. The news was made public outside the plenary assembly of the Polish Bishops’ Conference held in mid-June 2019.

The future center will open in the city of Katowice, in Silesia. Its goal will be to prepare and accompany the priests responsible for the practice of exorcisms, as stated by Andrzej Czaja, the Bishop of Opole, who presides over the Commission for the Doctrine of the Faith within the Polish Episcopate.

This center of formation will complement other initiatives intended to help priests charged with this delicate ministry, e.g., a monthly magazine founded in 2012.

The continuing formation of exorcist priests—Poland has 130, while France has a hundred—has developed over the course of several decades. Among the key institutions dedicated to this goal, the International Association of Exorcists, founded in 1991 by Fr. Gabriele Amorth, chief exorcist of the diocese of Rome for almost 20 years, brings together 250 exorcists scattered throughout more than 30 countries.