When can the Prayer to St. Michael against the devil and the bad angels be recited?
This powerful prayer (see below in its original entirety), written by Pope Leo XIII in 1888, was incorporated into the Roman Ritual in 1925 (Tit. XI, Cap. 3) with the rubric that it can be recited by bishops or by priests who have received the authority to do so from their Ordinaries. However, this rubric concerns the public prayers of the Church that are contained in the Roman Ritual. The same restriction does not apply to the private recitation of this prayer by any individual priest, or any of the faithful for that matter, as many bishops permitted and encouraged before Vatican II. The Churchs traditional teaching concerning the recitation of private exorcism prayers is contained in the Moral Theology manual of Dominicus Prmmer (Vol. II, 463): It is not only clerics who can pronounce an exorcism in a private and secret manner, enjoying a special power over the devils in virtue of the order of the exorcistate, but also the laity themselves. It is in no way forbidden to the laity nor
