By Lianne Kolirin
Movies about exorcisms are nothing new, but when Russell Crowe took on the role of Gabriele Amorth, the horror sub-genre shifted up a gear.
Hitting cinemas in April and released on DVD and Blu-ray this month, The Pope’s Exorcist has brought in millions of dollars in ticket sales and continues to draw in viewers of the popular horror sub-genre.
Part of the appeal, as distributor Sony Pictures puts it, is the notion that the film is “inspired by the actual files of Father Gabriele Amorth, chief exorcist of the Vatican”.
A quick look at the seriously creepy trailer, however, suggests that while the Oscar-winning Crowe might pull off the accent, this is far from a documentary about the Italian Catholic priest, who died in 2016 aged 91.
Here the Religion Media Centre takes a closer look at the man behind the character portrayed by the Gladiator star, charts the story of exorcism in the Roman Catholic Church and considers how much truth there is in the movie.
What is exorcism?
An exorcism is a rite used in the Roman Catholic Church and sometimes by other Christian denominations, to protect a person against the power of the Devil and force Satan to abandon an object, place or person.
There is scriptural evidence for Jesus casting out devils and Luke’s Gospel says that he gave his apostles the power to cast out demons, something then carried on within the early church. In the first two centuries of Christianity, it was considered a special gift, but after about 250AD the function was entrusted to a special class of clergy called exorcists. It continues to play a significant role within Catholicism today.
Within Catholicism, exorcism is a specific form of prayer against the Devil. There are two kinds: minor and major exorcisms. Minor exorcisms, mainly used in baptisms, call for evil spirits to be driven out. Major exorcisms are performed on those deemed possessed and can take months or longer for the person to be free from possession.
An exorcism is carried out only after the person afflicted has undergone medical and psychiatric assessments and the church representative decides that the person is possessed. An exorcism does not take place based solely on the person claiming they possessed. While the Catholic Church mostly carries out these rituals on its own members, anyone can approach the church for help.
Major exorcisms are considered an extremely serious ritual, are governed by the Catholic Church’s canon law and require the permission of the diocesan bishop. The ritual includes readings from the Bible and a series of prayers are recited. Holy water is sprinkled on the person and the exorcist also places his hands — and they are always the hands of a man, because exorcists are priests, and the Catholic priesthood is all-male — on the person and breathes on them too, to represent the power of the Holy Spirit working on them.
Another essential and highly dramatic part of the ritual, familiar to people who have watched films such as The Exorcist, is that a cross is presented to the possessed person, with the words: “See the cross of the Lord; begone you hostile powers.”
According to the guide to exorcism published by the Bishops’ Conference of the United States, the words are: “Finally, the Lord’s Cross is shown to the afflicted person and the sign of the cross is made over him/her demonstrating the power of Christ over the Devil.”
At one time, the exorcism ritual was conducted only in Latin but given that even priests nowadays are not so familiar with the church’s ancient language, an English version of the ritual was published by the US bishops in 2017. The document is available only to priests and bishops, although the US bishops did also publish Prayers against the Powers of Darkness as a guide for the public.
According to Catholic Online, the prayers said by the exorcist include: “I command you, unclean spirit, whoever you are, along with all your minions now attacking this servant of God, by the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit, by the coming of our Lord for judgment, that you tell me by some sign your name, and the day and hour of your departure. I command you, moreover, to obey me to the letter, I who am a minister of God despite my unworthiness; nor shall you be emboldened to harm in any way this creature of God, or the bystanders, or any of their possessions.”
Who was Gabriele Amorth?
Born into a family of lawyers in Modena in 1925, he fought for the Italian resistance during the Second World War, after which he went on to study law, work as a journalist and even dabble in politics as a deputy in the youth wing of the Christian Democratic Party.
He was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1954. It would be a further three decades before he took on the role for which he was remembered.
In June 1986 he was appointed assistant exorcist of the Diocese of Rome under the tutelage of leading exorcist Candido Amantini. Amantini died in 1992 and Amorth succeeded him. The Pope’s Exorcist is, according to Sony, based on two memoirs by Amorth: An Exorcist Tells His Story and An Exorcist: More Stories.
In an interview with the Daily Mirror this year, Crowe said he took on the role because of his interest in Amorth, rather than the script he was sent. “I started by looking into him and then I went to Rome and I spent some time talking to friends of his and people who worked with him,” he said. “It was his real-life story that I connected to.”
Amorth claimed to “speak with the Devil every day” and to have performed tens of thousands of exorcisms during his career.
Speaking of demand for his services, he wrote of his bestseller An Exorcist Tells His Story: “I felt I had been called to an apostolate among people who suffered greatly and whom nobody understood — neither their relatives, their doctors nor their priests.”
Aware that many of those who came to him may have suffered with mental health difficulties, Amorth wrote: “The symptoms of possession often include violent headaches and stomach cramps, but you must always go to the doctor before you go to the exorcist. Of the thousands of patients I have seen, only a hundred or so have been truly possessed.”
He had made headlines in the past for some of his controversial views. Speaking at a film festival in Umbria in 2011, he denounced yoga as “satanic” because it promoted the practice of Hinduism and “leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter.” He also spoke out against psychics and freemasonry.
Amorth, a war hero who was awarded Italy’s military cross at the end of the war, publicly declared that Hitler and Stalin had been possessed by the Devil.
Comments he made about the mysterious disappearance of the Vatican schoolgirl Emanuela Orlandi — now the subject of a hit Netflix documentary series — also proved controversial. He claimed the Holy See was directly involved in the teenager’s disappearance, saying it was a “crime of a sexual nature”.
How true is Amorth’s depiction?
The film was slated as “unreliable … splatter cinema” by the International Association of Exorcists, an organisation that Amorth co-founded in 1990.
After the release of the film’s trailer in March, the association said: “The end result is to instil the conviction that exorcism is an abnormal, monstrous and frightening phenomenon, whose only protagonist is the devil, whose violent reactions can be faced with great difficulty; which is the exact opposite of what occurs in the context of exorcism celebrated in the Catholic Church in obedience to the directives imparted by it.”
The association criticised the film for being “all too freely” based on Amorth’s writings. It suggests that the film portrayed the Vatican with a “Da Vinci Code effect” to “instil in the public the usual doubt: who is the real enemy? The Devil or the ecclesiastical ‘power’?”
Though the film’s special effects are clearly there to draw in the fearless fans of horror movies, some of what Amorth claimed to have seen was no less incredible.
During his lifetime, he recalled tales of young children displaying inexplicable strength, while others had vomited rose petals and long pieces of iron. There were those who spoke in voices and languages not their own.
Several of his books were published by Sophia Institute Press. Michael Lichens, its editor, told the Catholic News Agency: “Most movies about Catholicism and spiritual warfare sensationalise. Sensationalism and terror sell tickets. As a fan of horror movies, I can understand and even appreciate that. As a Catholic who has studied Father Amorth, though, I think such sensationalism distorts the important work of exorcism.”
While popular culture sparks people’s interest, it can be a delicate balance, said Lichens, who admitted he is “always concerned about inspiring curiosity about the demonic”.
“As Christians, we know we have nothing to fear from the demonic, but curiosity might lead some to want to seek out the supernatural or the demonic,” he told the agency.
For all his purported dealings with the Devil, Amorth felt no fear. His obituary in The Times quoted him as saying: “I have faith. I laugh at the demon and say to him: ‘I’ve got the Madonna on my side I am called Gabriel. Go fight the Archangel Gabriel if you will.’ That usually shuts them up.”
Does the Catholic Church take the Devil seriously today?
It certainly does. The Vatican requires each Catholic diocese to have a trained exorcist. The Devil is referred to in prayers in the church during baptism — a ritual familiar to anyone who has watched The Godfather, with its scene that cuts between the baptism of Connie’s son and the gunning down of people by the Mafia: “Do you renounce Satan, and all his works and all his empty promises?”
If a baby is baptised, the godparents reply on their behalf, but if an adult is baptised, they make the pledge themselves. This baptismal vow is renewed by a Catholic when they are confirmed and also each Easter.
Pope Francis frequently refers to the Devil in his tweets and homilies, considering him to be an insidious enemy of people and the church.
