Angered by mortgage policies that fail to address the national foreclosure crisis, members of New York's clergy gathered in front of JPMorgan Chase's Park Avenue headquarters on Thursday to close their accounts and exorcise what they perceived to be the evil spirits inhabiting the bank.

"JPMorgan Chase needs to be exorcised from the demons of selfishness, avarice and greed," Rev. Allan Ramirez of the Brookville Reformed Church, in Brookville, N.Y., said in a statement. "The people who bailed them out when they brought us to the brink of a world economic collapse are the very people whose mortgages they are foreclosing and throwing out on the streets into homelessness."

Ramirez performed the exorcism as part of a larger effort organized by New York Communities for Change, formerly the New York chapter of ACORN, in which elected officials, clergy and unions are campaigning to pressure JPMorgan to reform its mortgage policies and take steps to address the national foreclosure crisis.