Pope Paul VI: The Devil is 'an Active Force, a Living, Spiritual Being'

The following are remarks delivered by Blessed Pope Paul VI during a General Audience on November 15, 1972.

We come face to face with sin which is a perversion of human freedom and the profound cause of death because it involves detachment from God, the source of life. And then sin in its turn becomes the occasion and the effect of interference in us and our work by a dark, hostile agent, the Devil. Evil is not merely an absence of something but an active force, a living, spiritual being that is perverted and that perverts others. It is a terrible reality, mysterious and frightening.