On September 6, 1995 La Stampa, Turin's daily newspaper, titled at full page 'Is Mary Poppins really Satan?'. Many readers were, understandably, surprised but no reader was more astonished than the undersigned. In fact I learned from the article that I had accused Mary Poppins to have 'clear links with the esoteric and satanic thought'. I was credited for having discovered that 'under the gentle mask of the extraordinary nanny a dangerous creature was hidden, with features no less than satanic'. The same journalist, appropriately, interviewed an exorcist who complained that 'Introvigne normally minimizes the presence of Satan in our life' (a reference to my book on Satanism, where I argue that the number of real Satanists is minimum compared to the number of those who promote Satanism scares). But this, for the exorcist, amounted to still more convincing evidence that Mary Poppins was really satanic: 'If someone like Massimo Introvigne has written such a thing, this could only mean that the danger is really there'. The problem was, however, that I had never written such a thing.

Fiction·Interpretation·Controversy·Criticism·Media·Reputation