“I talk to the devil every day,” Father Gabriele Amorth, the Catholic Church’s main exorcist, often assured. He is said to have made more than 100,000 cases of tampering and possession against demons for more than 30 years, until he passed away at the age of 91 in 2016. He would also joke, “Do you know why the devil runs away when he sees me? Because I’m uglier than him.”
Amorth looks the same as the player Russell Crowe In the movie ‘The Pope’s Exorcist’, the feature film inspired by ‘Memoirs of an Exorcist’, which is currently in theaters and is the most famous of the more than 20 books he supposedly wrote about the priest’s experiences. The legitimacy of this source is only in terms of the painful situation in which those who were the victims of an extraordinary act of the devil found themselves a few weeks ago by the International Association of Exorcists, which he co-founded in 1994 and which has more than 400 members from around the world a few weeks ago. A show that aims to arouse fear in the audience because it is “aggressive”.
Amorth had a preference for films that focused on his profession, or at least the most famous ones. “The Exorcist” (1973), which he thought was “largely true”; So much so that, at the end of her life, she let the director of that horror classic, William Friedkin, film her performing her exorcism and turn the recording into the documentary ‘The Devil and Father Amorth’ (2018).
Otherwise, he felt that pop culture was largely responsible for the actions of the devil. Some of the targets of his anger are vampire fictions such as Marilyn Manson and the ‘Twilight’ saga that, according to her, draws young people to the dark side; Books he plays because he thinks Harry Potter encourages the use of black magic; or, according to him, yoga, which is a gateway to Hinduism and other Eastern religions, based on the illusion of reincarnation. He also opposed children celebrating Halloween in his senior years.
However, despite what all this might imply, Amorth did not see the Devil around every corner.. He was aware that many of those who came to him were not possessed, but simply victims of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. From time to time, yes, he witnessed events that were completely inexplicable according to the laws of nature. Bodies that are curved or rise one meter above the ground in anatomically impossible shapes. An 11-year-old easily shakes off the three burly cops squeezing him and lifts a large 10-year-old table. People who can vomit rose petals, pieces of iron and shards of glass or speak languages they never had a chance to learn. He claimed that he was never afraid of the devil. Other headline statements were as follows: “Actually, I can say that he is afraid of me”.
14 years old
As detailed in her books, Amorth discovered her religious vocation at the age of 14, but for a time circumstances had shifted her life in other directions. He fought in World War II and was awarded a medal for his fight against the Nazis at the end of the conflict. He then studied Law and immersed himself in the world of politics and came to work in the Italian Christian Democracy with the country’s future Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti. He was ordained as a priest in 1954 when he was about to turn 30, but did not begin exorcisms until 1986.
He would perform his rites in a room isolated from the streets of Rome – “so no one hears the screams” – and to do this he always had two wooden crosses, a marjoram to disperse the holy water, and a bottle of consecrated oil. ; he also wore a purple priest’s smock around the patient’s neck and a prayer book. Although he claimed to be able to clear out demonic entities via Skype as well, this was the norm anyway.
The fanatical persecution of the Antichrist and his tendency to turn it into a spectacle inevitably turned him against the most progressive sections of religious authority.. Also some of his claims. Many felt that Amorth offered an all too easy moral escape route for pedophile priests, claiming that the sexual harassment scandals uncovered within the Church were proof that the devil had infiltrated the Vatican; and likewise, some thought that his confirmation that Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin were possessed by Satan was a way of turning genocide victims into victims.
Instead, he always had the last three priests with him. On the one hand, both II. John Paul and XVI. for another, Francis encouraged the recruitment and training of exorcistsand urged all dioceses to have in their ranks at least one priest specializing in such rituals, although most believers considered demonic possession to be a fantasy. Or maybe that’s why. After all, as Amorth puts it, “The Devil is always hiding, and above all he asks us not to believe in his existence.”