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. Full Story - Tom Leonard - Daily Mail
Father Amorth Knew Third Secret of Fatima?
In a recent article on the Secret of Fatima, Steve Skojec, the founder and editor of OnePeterFive, published, to my knowledge, for the first time in the English language words from Rome’s chief exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth (d. 2016), about Padre Pio and his knowledge of the Third Secret of Fatima. They come from a newly published book written by José María Zavala, entitled The Best Kept Secret of Fatima (El Sécreto Mejor Guardado de Fátima).
OnePeterFive‘s contributor, Mr. Andrew Guernsey, was very helpful in finding these quotes. Since Mr. Skojec’s own article is somewhat lengthy, many readers may not have realized the importance of this interview with Father Amorth, which was only to be published after the priest’s death. In the following, I shall quote extensively from Steve’s own post which first speaks about Father Amorth’s own conviction that the specific Consecration of Russia has not yet taken place, and then enters into the larger discussion about Fatima:
It [a piece of the Fatima puzzle] came in the form of an interview with the very famous (and now deceased) Roman exorcist, Fr. Gabriel Amorth, also conducted by José María Zavala. Fr. Amorth personally knew Saint (Padre) Pio for 26 years, and it is from this towering figure of 20th century Catholic sanctity that he claims to have learned the contents of the Third Secret of Fatima. Full Story - Maike Hickson - OnePeterFive
The Devil and Father Amorth: Witnessing “the Vatican Exorcist” at Work
The Devil and Father Amorth | Youtube Official Trailer
When he made his 1973 classic, The Exorcist, William Friedkin had never seen an exorcism. For decades he wondered how close he had come to reality. So, last May, he followed “the Dean of Exorcists” as he fought to expel Satan from an Italian woman.
Sunday morning, May 1 of this year, was Father Amorth’s 91st birthday, but he had no plans to celebrate. He awoke just after dawn, said his usual morning prayers and one to Joseph of Cupertino, a 17th-century saint, and another to the late Father Candido Amantini, his mentor. Clutching a walking aid, he shuffled from his cell-like room to the dining room on the third floor of the Paulist Fathers residence, south of Rome’s historic center.
After his usual breakfast of caffè latte and biscotti, Father Amorth returned to his room, which had a tall window, a hospital bed, two chairs, and a wooden desk cluttered with pictures of the Virgin Mary and Padre Pio, a priest-mystic who experienced stigmata—bleeding wounds, corresponding to those inflicted on Jesus Christ on the Cross. For the next six hours, Father Amorth reviewed the mail requesting his services from around the world. Each letter contained tragic questions and appeals from people who knew Amorth only by name and reputation. He answered the letters, writing with a fountain pen, licking the envelopes and stamps himself. At two P.M., he knelt again to pray, then arose with difficulty, took up his walking aid, and made his way to an elevator, which took him to the first floor, where the small room dedicated to his work was located. The hallway was empty and dark. Whispering voices and footsteps could be heard, as from a tomb.
His old adversary was waiting.
At exactly three P.M. he began to conduct the ritual of exorcism. The possessed woman, Rosa, was in her late 30s, tall and slender, with raven-black hair. She was as dark and attractive as an Italian movie star—Sophia Loren or Silvana Mangano, with a quiet demeanor. She had a college degree but couldn’t work because of the fits and behavioral changes that came over her, most severely on the Christian holidays, such as Palm Sunday, Ash Wednesday, Easter, and Pentecost. This was her ninth exorcism with Father Amorth. As with traditional psychiatry, the patient is usually not “cured” after the first session. Father Amorth had been exorcising one man for 16 years. Full Story - William Freidkin - Vanity Fair
The Exorcist itself is loosely based on a real life occurrence. In the late 1940s a 13-year-old boy, commonly referred to as Roland Doe, mourned the death of his aunt, he became demonically possessed. His Aunt it seems was a spiritualist who had indoctrinated him into black magic and the occult. Come the 70s, the blockbuster Movie was produced and in the ensuing decades tales of its haunting and bizarre happenings have continued to surface
