When a San Jose Mercury News reporter visited the small church, Iglesia Apostoles y Profetas, last month, leaders spoke openly about the exorcism. Pastor Rene Huezo, Arely’s grandfather, said, “If you read the Bible, you’ll see that Jesus casts away demons and made sick people healthy again. It’s not when I want to do it, it’s when God, in his will, wants to heal the person. The preacher is like an instrument of God; what we do is what God says.”
The pastor admitted that his granddaughter’s death has been painful. “It’s difficult for people to understand what happened,” he said. Yet “it’s the stuff of God, and everything is in the will of God no matter how small or big.”
Iglesia Apostoles y Profetas, with about 20 members, is a fringe congregation of a Pentecostal movement based in El Salvador. Rafael Escobar, the pastor of a nearby sister church, told the Mercury News that exorcism is a “dark practice” and that Iglesia Apostoles y Profetas has separated from a local church alliance.
