THE PRIEST WHO HAD THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST
As the Vatican's chief exorcist for 30 years, Father Gabriel Amorth claimed to have dealt with the devil many times
As the Vatican’s chief exorcist, Father Gabriel Amorth was often asked to help people whose troubles turned out to be far more mundane than demonic possession.
However, he was convinced he faced evil incarnate one morning in 1997 when a young Italian man was brought to his small consulting room in Rome.
The peasant was accompanied by his priest and another man. The latter was a translator.
For while the afflicted man spoke only Italian, the evil spirit inside him spoke perfect English, he was told.
Fr Amorth started the exorcism in Latin and the moment he mentioned Jesus’s name, the young man fixed his gaze on him and began to yell curses and threats in English, then spitting and making out as if about to attack him.
When the exorcist arrived at the prayer Praecipio tibi (‘I command you’), the demon briefly went quiet.
‘But then, screaming and howling, the demon burst forth and looked straight at him, drooling saliva from the young man’s mouth,’ writes Marcello Stanzione, a fellow Catholic priest who worked with Fr Amorth.
Fr Amorth continued the ‘rite of liberation’, demanding the demonic presence reveal its name. He was shocked when he was told it was Lucifer himself. Momentarily shaken to be confronting the Devil, he nevertheless ploughed on.
The possessed man resumed his shrieking, twisting his head back and rolling his eyes, his back arched for quarter of an hour. The room became extremely cold and ice crystals formed on the windows and walls.
Moments after the exorcist ordered Lucifer to abandon the peasant, the young man’s body stiffened and began to levitate, hovering three feet in the air for several minutes before collapsing into a chair.
Finally, Satan admitted defeat, announcing the exact day and hour when he would leave the man’s body. It sounds like the stuff of horror fiction. But Fr Stanzione insists it all happened. He has just written a book, The Devil Is Afraid Of Me, containing astonishing new details — including the horrific demonic encounter in 1997 — about the extraordinary life of Fr Amorth.
A man who was dubbed the Dean of Exorcists but who in the flesh looked more like a friendly tortoise than a grim vanquisher of evil, Fr Amorth said he conducted a staggering 60,000 exorcisms over a 30-year period.
The Pope’s chief exorcist died aged 91 in 2016, prompting national mourning in Italy, where an estimated 500,000 people visit an exorcist each year. Although as official exorcist for the diocese of Rome he was the Catholic Church’s most famous and controversial exorcist, he was far from its only one. There are at least 400 in the world. Even in the traditionally sceptical UK, the church says it is carrying out an increasing number of exorcisms.
Most of his colleagues prefer to practise their peculiar craft in the shadows — and the church, wary of ridicule, encourages that — but Fr Amorth was more than happy to discuss how he fought the powers of darkness. The terrifying 1973 film The Exorcist remains the go-to reference work, its story of a little girl transformed into a projectile-vomiting, blaspheming horror was loosely based on a reallife exorcism in the U.S. Fr Amorth said it was his favourite film, arguing that although the special effects were over-the-top, it was ‘substantially’ accurate and helped people understand his work.
The possessed ‘isn’t a bad person, only a suffering one,’ he claimed.
The youngest of five sons of a lawyer in the town of Modena, Fr Amorth fought as a teenager in the Italian resistance in World War II (earning a bravery medal).
He later became a lawyer himself and briefly worked for the future Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti before taking holy orders in 1951.
It was in 1986 that he became an apprentice exorcist and he went on to set up the International Association of Exorcists in 1990.
He initially conducted exorcisms in Rome’s famous Church of the Holy Stairs until the shrieks drove away the faithful. He then moved to the headquarters of his order, the Paulist Fathers, and converted a small, nine by 15ft room into his exorcism room — well away from the street so passers-by couldn’t hear the screaming and call the police.
Half a dozen chairs lined the walls for his assistant exorcists and the afflicted’s loved ones, and a worn-out brown velvet armchair for the patient.
Particularly troubled souls might have to be tied down with straps on a small bed.
The patient would always be violent so exorcists never practise alone. The walls were decorated with eight crucifixes, pictures of Mary and one of the Archangel Michael, leader of God’s army.
He would also have a photo of Pope John Paul II which apparently made devils ‘particularly irritable’.
The priest kept the tools of his trade in an old briefcase: two wooden crucifixes, an aspergillum for sprinkling holy water and a vial of consecrated oil. He also used a purple priest’s stole, wrapping it round the patient’s neck, and a book of prayers containing the official exorcism formulae.
He was famous for his sense of humour — not the obvious prerequisite for an exorcist — and always started off each ritual by literally thumbing his nose at the Devil. A favourite Amorth quip was to say: ‘You know why the devil flees when he sees me? Because I’m uglier than he is.’
Although the Catholic Church officially recognises exorcism, its modernisers see it as a medieval hangover that plays on superstition to strengthen religious devotion.
Fr Amorth freely admitted many who came to him had mental problems best dealt with by a psychologist, and he estimated he only came across around 100 genuine cases of possession.
The Pope’s chief exorcist died aged 91 in 2016, prompting national mourning in Italy, where an estimated 500,000 people visit an exorcist each year. As official exorcist for the diocese of Rome he was the Catholic Church’s most famous and controversial exorcist...