Pope John Paul II, in his general audience of August 13, 1986, expounded at length on the fall of the angels and, in speaking on the origin of Satan, said:

"Satan wishes to destroy life lived in accordance with the truth, life in the fullness of good, the supernatural life of grace and love. As the result of the sin of our first parents, this fallen angel has acquired dominion over man to a certain extent. This is the doctrine that has been constantly professed and proclaimed by the Church, and which the Council of Trent confirmed in its treatise on original sin (cf. DS, 1511). In Sacred Scripture we find various indications of this influence on man and on the dispositions of his spirit (and of his body). In the Bible, Satan is called the `prince of this world' (cf. Jn. 12:31; 14:30; 16:11) and even the `god of this world' (2 Cor. 4:4). According to Sacred Scripture, and especially the New Testament, the dominion and the influence of Satan and of the other evil spirits embraces all the world. The action of Satan consists primarily in tempting men to evil, by influencing their imaginations and higher faculties, to turn them away from the law of God. It is possible that in certain cases the evil spirit goes so far as to exercise his influence not only on material things, but even on man's body, so that one can speak of ‘diabolical possession’ (cf. Mk. 5:2-9). It is not always easy to discern the preternatural factor operative in these cases, and the Church does not lightly support the tendency to attribute many things to the direct action of the devil; but in principle it cannot be denied that Satan can go to this extreme manifestation of his superiority in his will to harm and to lead to evil. To conclude, we must add that the impressive words of the Apostle John—‘The whole world lies under the power of the evil one’ (1 Jn. 5:19)— allude also to the presence of Satan in the history of humanity, a presence which becomes all the more acute when man and society depart from God. This ‘fall,’ which has the character of the rejection of God, with the consequent state of ‘damnation,’ consists in the free choice of those created spirits who have radically and irrevocably rejected God and his kingdom, usurping his sovereign rights and attempting to subvert the economy of salvation and the very order of the entire universe. We find a reflection of this attitude in the words addressed by the tempter to our first parents: ‘You will become like God’ or ‘like gods’ (cf. Gn. 3:5).Thus, the evil spirit tries to transplant into man the attitude of rivalry, insubordination and opposition to God, which has, as it were, become the motivation of all his existence. When, by an act of his own free will, he rejected the truth that he knew about God, Satan became the cosmic `liar and the father of lies' (Jn. 8:44). For this reason, he lives in radical and irreversible denial of God, and seeks to impose on creation—on the other beings created in the image of God, and in particular on people—his own tragic `lie about the good' that is God. In the Book of Genesis we find a precise description of this lie and falsification of the truth about God, which Satan (under the form of a serpent) tries to transmit to the first representatives of the human race: God is jealous of his own prerogatives and therefore wants to impose limitations on man (cf. Gn. 3:5). Satan invites the man to free himself from the imposition of this yoke by making himself `like God.” On this condition of existential falsehood, Satan—according to St. John —also becomes a ‘murderer,’ that is, one who destroys the supernatural life which God has made to dwell from the beginning in him and in the creatures made ‘in the likeness of God’: the other pure spirits and men; the influence of the evil spirit can conceal itself in a more profound and effective way: it is in his interests to make himself `unknown.' Satan has the skill in the world to induce people to deny his existence in the name of rationalism and of every other system of thought which seeks all possible means to avoid recognizing his activity. This does not, however, signify the elimination of man's free will and responsibility, and even less the frustration of the saving action of Christ.The Christian, appealing to the Father and the Spirit of Jesus and invoking the kingdom, cries with the power of faith: Let us not succumb to temptation, free us from evil, from the evil one, O Lord; let us not fall into the infidelity to which we are seduced by the one who has been unfaithful from the beginning" (Pope John Paul II, L'Osservatore Romano, August 20, 1986).