It isn’t daily that an exorcist writes a movie review, but last month a bunch of demon removers did just that.
“Unbelievable … splatter cinema”, International Society of Exorcists declared the recent film “The Exorcist of the Pope”, starring Russell Crowe, which hits theaters on Friday.
The 29-year-old Catholic organization added: “The final result is to instil the belief that exorcisms are an abnormal, monstrous and terrifying phenomenon whose only hero is the devil, whose violent reactions could be faced with great difficulties.”
There’s more to their anger than Hollywood’s knack for exaggeration. It seems that IAE has a private problem with the film.
The supernatural horror film draws its inspiration from its late founder, Father Gabriele Amorth (played by Crowe), who held the title of the Vatican’s chief exorcist for over twenty years.
If an individual was believed to be inhabited by Devil or another nefarious force, he was their predominant goal.
Firebrand Amorth claimed to have conducted roughly 160,000 exorcisms in his lifetime.
“I discuss with the devil daily,” Amorth, who died in 2016 at the age of 91, told the Sunday Telegraph in 2004. “I discuss with him in Latin. She answers in Italian. I fought him daily.”
Born in 1925 in Modena, Italy, Amorth was destroyed by demons in 1986 after unexpectedly becoming an assistant to Father Candido Amantini, then the only exorcist in Italy.
![Russell Crowe plays Father Gabriele Amorth in this new supernatural horror](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009568385.jpg?w=1024)
“From that day on, I dropped all the things and devoted myself entirely to exorcism,” he told the Telegraph. When Amantini died in 1992, Amorth was promoted to the top position.
The priest said that only about 94 of the 1000’s of exorcisms he had performed were full possession – cases varied in severity – and that a part of the job was to find out if someone was simply sick or in need of a psychiatrist. But he dramatically described, no less than in his estimation, legitimate clashes with the devil.
In his book The Exorcist Tells His Story, Amorth said that he often witnessed possessed souls displaying superhuman strength. There was a boy who couldn’t be lifted off the ground irrespective of what number of burly men tried to lift him. There was also a person who was given “enough sleeping pills to calm an elephant” but never lost consciousness.
Amorth also said that he once saw a young man drooling excessively, calling himself Lucifer, after which hovering three feet above his bed.
His technique was no different from those often depicted in Hollywood: the priest carried a briefcase stuffed with crucifixes, holy water and oil, and a book of specific prayers approved for exorcisms. The phrase he shouted in Latin: “Exorcizo Deo immundissimus spiritus!” (Or: “I solid out, O God, this unclean spirit!”). Some exorcisms would take half-hour, while more severe ones may require multiple sessions lasting months and even years.
![Father Gabriele Amorth claimed to have presided over as many as 160,000 exorcisms.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009570789.jpg?w=1024)
Amorth became a lightning rod of controversy during his years in the role. On the stage of the 2011 film festival, he stated that “practicing yoga is satanic, it results in evil, similar to reading Harry Potter” and implied that Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were possessed by the devil.
And he didn’t keep the inner workings of his performance a secret. He has written over 30 books, including The Exorcist Tells His Story and posthumously published in 2018, Father Amorth: My Battle Against Devil.
Although the IAE condemned The Exorcist of the Pope, Amorth himself saw the videos as a great tool to tell the world of his plight.
Of the 1973 classic The Exorcist, he wrote that “the film tackled the problem of evil very soberly, rekindling interest in exorcism that had all but been forgotten.”
Amorth finally met the director of that film, William Friedkin, a few years later when a Hollywood titan filmed Amorth performing an exorcism. him afterwards he wrote of a “terrifying” experience for Vanity Fair.
![William Friedkin, Director of Marketing](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009521582.jpg?w=1024)
Friedkin chillingly describes meeting a lady named Rosa on whom Amorth performed nine exorcisms.
“It wasn’t Rosa,” Friedkin said of the Italian woman in her 30s. “It was a monstrous, ugly, distraught creature with a hoarse voice filled with anger and anguish. It was the voice of the damned.
Amorth also revealed in a 2002 interview that Pope John Paul II performed three exorcisms as pope, including considered one of a 20-year-old woman.
![Amorth, played by Crowe (above left), has written about thirty books on exorcism.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009568384.jpg?w=1024)
“This girl was rolling around on the ground,” said Amorth of the papal purge. “People in the Vatican have never seen anything prefer it… For us exorcists, it’s normal.”
The Exorcist was also known for his humorousness. And despite his dedication to defeating Devil, Amorth said he had no problem with the tradition of dressing up as “witches and devils” on Halloween, a custom more popular in America during his lifetime than in Italy.
“Nothing happens on October 31,” he said. “Here, on Christmas Eve, Satanists have their orgies.”