A Bishop has fallen in love with an expert on Satanism and decided to leave the church to pursue her.
He left his former colleagues convinced that he has been “possessed by demons.”
52-year-old Xavier Novell is an exorcist Bishop from Spain, who helps drive out evil spirits from people who are possessed. So, it came as a surprise when he fell in love with satanic-themed writer and psychologist Silvia Caballol.
The pair met after Xavier started studying demonology.
Xavier, who was made Spain’s youngest Bishop in 2010, left the Catholic church last month due to “personal reasons”.
Catholic publication Religión Digital has confirmed that he is now in a relationship with the satanic erotic fiction author.
Xavier said that he had “fallen in love” with Silvia and “wanted to do the right thing”, which is something he has struggled with in the past.
Previously, Xavier has been criticized for carrying out gay conversion therapy, a controversial set of techniques and exercise that claim to turn homosexual people straight.
He was even accused of arranging a marriage between one of his conversion patients and a woman without the consent of a local priest or her parents.
His zeal in the past makes it even more shocking that he would turn around to date the author of Amnesia, a dark erotic trilogy, and The Hell of Gabriel’s Lust which depicts “the raw struggle between good and evil, god and Satan and angels and demons”.
“[It is] not a problem of celibacy but rather of infestation,” one of his former colleagues told Spanish media, insisting that Xavier’s dramatic spiritual U-turn can only be explained by demons possessing him.
It has also been alleged that he refused Pope Francis’ advice to have an exorcism to “free his troubled spirit”. Xavier regularly performed exorcisms when he was a clergyman.