The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist

by Matt Baglio

  Without wasting time, Father Carmine took Giovanna into the small room and everyone followed—Father Carmine and the two Franciscans in their brown robes, Father Gary in his black clerics. All four priests had on their stoles. The second Father Carmine closed the door, the mood in the room plummeted, becoming very subdued. Giovanna sat down in the chair, and even though the Ritual hadn't begun, she began to twitch nervously. Everyone's eyes were fixed on her, and Father Gary could tell immediately that something was unique about this case—he felt a strong sense of foreboding in her presence.

  Father Carmine tossed some holy water from his squeeze bottle in her direction, saying, “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.” [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.]

  Giovanna immediately let fly a bloodcurdling scream that gave Father Gary the chills. She quickly stood and scooped up the metal chair with one hand, wielding it over her head like a club while Father Daniel, the family priest, and her husband quickly jumped in to stop her from hurting anyone. Wrestling her back down into the chair, Father Carmine didn't hesitate in placing his hand on top of her head and invoking the Holy Spirit, even as she kicked and fought against the hands that held her back.

  After a prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, Father Carmine skipped straight through to the exorcism prayers: “Deus, humani generis conditor atque defénsor, réspice super huncfàmulam tuam, quam ad tuam imàginem formàsti et ad tux vocas glories, consirtium …” he said. [God, Creator and defender of the human race, look down on this your servant whom you formed in your own image and now call to be a partaker in your glory …]

  The demon wasted no time in manifesting. “You have no power over me!” he growled at Father Carmine in the guttural voice.

  “Exaudí, Deus, humana; salutis amàtor, oratiónem Apostolórum tuórum Petri et Pauli et omnium Sanctorum, qui tua grátia viciares ex-stitérunt Maligni: libera hunefàmulum tuam ab omni aliena potestàte et in-cólumen custódi, ut traquillx devotióni restituía, te corde diligat et opéribus desérviat, te glonficet làudibus et magnificet vita,” Father Carmine prayed. [Hear, God, lover of human salvation, the prayer of your apostles Peter and Paul and of all the saints, who by your grace emerged as victors over the Evil one: free this, your servant, from every foreign power and keep her safe, so that restored to peaceful devotion, she may love you with her heart and may serve you zealously with her works, may glorify you with praises and may magnify you with her life.]

  “You don't really believe those children's stories do you?” the demon scoffed. Once again the voice reminded Father Gary of a sound a dog might make were it able to speak. It was a deep, dark evil sound that seemed to come from the depths of the woman's stomach.

  “Oooooooooohhhhhhhh,” she moaned over and over as she fought back with even more violence, forcing Father Gary to jump in to help restrain her. The family priest grabbed her legs while Father Gary and Father Daniel held her arms; Giovanna's husband wrapped his own arm around her torso even as she growled and spit at Father Carmine.

  Father Gary had never seen this strong a reaction. Giovanna's face had transformed, displaying a sneering look of pure hatred, with her eyes remaining open. Usually in the rare instances when the eyes stayed open, people had mild reactions to the prayers. In stronger cases victims typically closed their eyes to avoid looking at the sacred objects in the room. This time, however, not only were Giovanna's eyes open, but she boldly glared at the various people in the room.

  “Exorcizo te, vetus hóminis inimice: recede ab hoc plàsmate Dei. Hoc te iubet Dominus noster Iesus Christus, cuius humilitas tuam vicit supérbiam, làrgitas tuam prostràvit invidiam, mansuetúdo calcàvit sccvitiam.” [I cast you out, old enemy of man: depart from this servant of God. Our Lord Jesus Christ commands this of you, the humility of whom conquered your pride, the generosity of whom laid low your envy, the gentleness of whom trampled upon your cruelty.]

  Again the voice exploded: “Don't you know that he died on the cross? And you are still following him! We are stronger! We are stronger! We win! We win!”

  Father Carmine poured some holy water into her eyes, and she struggled violently to shake free, shouting “Basta!” and screaming. He continued, undeterred. “Obmutésce, pater mendàcii, ñeque impedios hancfàmulam Dei Dóminum benedicere et laudare. Hoc tibí imperat Iesus Christus, sapiéntia Patris et splendor veritàtis, cuius verba spiritus et vita sunt,” he intoned. [Be silent, father of lies, and do not hinder this servant of God from blessing and praising the Lord. Jesus Christ commands this of you, the wisdom of the Father and the splendor of truth, the words of whom are spirit and life.] Again he repeated the word imperat (commands) a few times, accentuating it as he did, “ím-mmm-pe-rat,” in an effort to force the demon to acknowledge his inferiority.

  Giovanna bared her teeth. Thick globs of mucus and saliva oozed from her mouth and ran down her chin. “Shut up! Do you know who I am?” the deep voice growled. “Don't treat me like a pig! Look what I can do to this old woman, look what I can do!” Again her body shook violently, prompting all four men to jump in again to stop her from hurting herself.

  “Non mi toccare!” the demon shouted. Don't touch me! After a few minutes, Giovanna calmed down enough that Father Gary and the others could relax their grip. She continued to drool, making no effort to stop the saliva from dribbling onto her shirt. Already there was a small puddle beneath her feet. The family priest grabbed some paper towels and handed them to Giovanna's husband, who dutifully wiped her mouth.

  Father Carmine was just starting another prayer of the Ritual when, without warning, she turned toward Father Gary, fixing him with unblinking eyes full of hate. He noticed something incredibly unnatural about her eyes, which appeared somehow thicker than normal, almost like Coke bottles, the irises unusually large and black. Even more striking, however, was that a presence seemed to be missing. Her eyes seemed almost dead, the gaze reminding him of the lifeless eyes of cadavers he had seen on the embalming table.

  Trapped in the headlights of that “dead” stare, Father Gary felt suddenly exposed, insignificant, as the eyes bored into him. In this profound moment, he knew he was looking straight into the presence of pure evil. Refusing to be cowed, he quickly recomposed himself and refused to waver. I'll be damned if I am going to let this demon intimidate me, he thought. And moments later the demon looked away from Father Gary and fixed his eyes on someone else.

  The exorcism continued for over two hours, throughout which Giovanna continued to drool and fight violently while staring at everyone in the room in turn. Father Carmine interspersed Psalms with both the revised and the old Ritual. More than a few times, she passed out. Knowing this as a trick the demon will sometimes use to prevent his host from hearing the prayers, Father Carmine simply said a blessing or threw holy water onto her and she sprang right back up. Father Gary jumped in to hold her down on numerous occasions.

  As they neared the three-hour mark, Father Gary wondered how much longer they could continue. While all the men in the room were spent, especially Father Carmine, Giovanna showed no signs of slowing down, even though, Father Gary imagined, she had to be exhausted. Finally, when it looked like Father Carmine might pray the Ritual for the tenth time, he abruptly stopped and slapped her a few times on the forehead to bring her out of her trance.

  It took the woman a full five minutes to recover and even then she seemed rather confused. Because she was unable to stand on her own, Father Daniel and Giovanna's husband carried her out of the room and laid her on Father Carmine's couch. Before long, she began grunting and cursing again.

  “Did this do any good at all?” Father Gary asked Father Daniel.

  Looking grim, Father Daniel responded that the possession was very entrenched. Giovanna had been undergoing exorcisms for more than forty years, and her case was considered one of the most severe that many of the exorcists in Rome (including Father Amorth and Father Gramolazzo) had seen.

  “How did it happen?” Father
Gary asked.

  Father Daniel explained that Giovanna had been cursed by her mother when she was still in the womb. The mother, a poor woman from a small rural town, had originally tried to terminate the pregnancy on her own; when that failed, she had cursed her own baby.

  As they were talking, the woman began to shout once again, letting fly a string of blasphemies, at which point her husband and the family priest took her away. When she'd gone, Father Gary turned to Father Carmine, curious to know why this case had been so violent.

  “This is a very powerful demon,” Father Carmine said, explaining a little bit about what he meant. It was then that Father Gary learned that, just like the angels, demons have an entire hierarchy to their existence.

  THE BIBLE INDICATES that there is a hierarchy of demons. The “ruler of the demons” is mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 9:34), while Jesus referred to this hierarchy when he said “the Devil and his angels” (Matthew. 25:41). Moreover, since the demons were once angels, it seems logical to assume that they were once connected to the angelic hierarchy.

  The Bible mentions nine different orders of angels: Seraphim (Isaiah 6:2); Cherubim (Genesis 3:24); Thrones (Colossians 1:16); Dominations (Colossians 1:16, Ephesians 1:21); Virtues (Ephesians 1:21); Powers (Colossians 1:16, Ephesians 6:12); Principalities (Ephesians 6:12); Archangels, and Angels (Romans 8:38). Three Archangels appear in the Bible: Michael (Daniel 10:13, 21; 12:1; Jude 9; Apocalypse 12:7), Gabriel (Daniel 8:16, 9:21), and Raphael (Tobit 3:17). Commonly these nine orders are called “Choirs,” since their principal job is to sing the glory of God.

  Though many writers have attempted to address this hierarchy, perhaps the most well known is a man who lived about 500 C.E. called Pseudo-Dionysius, so named because he was mistaken by later writers as the convert of Saint Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite (Acts 17:34). A neo-Platonist, Pseudo-Dionysius grouped the nine choirs of angels into three hierarchies: the “Supreme Hierarchy,” consisting of the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; the “Middle Hierarchy,” with Dominations, Virtues, and Powers; and the “Lower Hierarchy,” made up of the Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. For Pseudo-Dionysius, this hierarchy constituted a sacred order of beings who were arranged in their likeness to God in descending order and who in their duties presided over the government of the world. Each hierarchy acted as a kind of “mirror” that “receives the rays of the supreme Deity which is the source of light… and pours it forth again abundantly, in accordance with God's law, upon those below itself.”

  More than a few theologians have pointed out the rigid and arbitrary nature of this structure. In the Bible, Michael appears as the leader of God's angelic army; and yet here, Archangels are near the bottom of the scale.

  When talking about the hierarchy, it's impossible not to see the limits of human reasoning at work. If angels are incorporeal spirits living in a world that we as humans can't even begin to comprehend, then how could we pretend to know their various ranks? Saint Ire-naeus had doubts about a structured hierarchy of angels, as did Saint Augustine, who wrote: “That there are in heaven Thrones, Dominations, Principalities and Powers, I firmly believe; that they differ among themselves I have no doubt; but as to saying what they are, and in what way they differ … I must admit I do not know.”

  Today, a majority of Catholic theologians lean toward the hierarchy as proposed by Thomas Aquinas, who adopted the Pseudo-Dionysius model, but used a slightly different distinction between the Choirs—that of varying degrees of intelligence.

  According to Aquinas, each angel is a distinct individual constituting a species unto itself. As a result each angel and demon varies slightly from the next, though rather than differing in materialistic ways, spirits vary in the degree of their perfection as spiritual beings—in other words, in their ability to manifest their powers.

  Yet, as with any intellectual theory, other factors must be taken into consideration. In a practical sense, this is also true when it comes to demons, exorcists say.

  The demons of the highest hierarchy always have biblical names like Satan, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Zebulun, Zebuin, and Meridiano. As Father Carmine explains, “They are usually followed by many others who are secondary and are the ones who go to possess a person because they have been ordered to by their leader.” Satan, of course, as the most powerful demon, is always present to some extent in every possession, but almost never is he “physically” present.

  The key to being able to differentiate between the types of demons is by their level of intelligence. “You don't measure the power of the demon by the strength of the person, but by the intelligence of the demon who talks,” says Father Gramolazzo. “They will always manifest a profound knowledge of theology.” In addition, a stronger demon will always be able to resist the prayers of exorcism longer than a weaker one, and he may be able to pronounce sacred names such as Jesus or Mary, names that a weaker demon will never say. Instead of using names, they will simply say, “He is destroying me,” or “She is burning me.”

  While the hierarchy of the angels is based on love, there is no such concept in “hell,” say exorcists. The demons keep their former angelic ranks, but the only thing that unifies them is their hatred for God and man. The demons of the lower ranks obey the stronger ones, not out of obedience but out of fear. “They are like slaves,” says Father Nanni.

  Exorcists have seen this firsthand when a more powerful demon blocked a weaker demon from leaving a person's body during an exorcism, even though the prayer caused him great pain. This is also evident when there is more than one demon present. The weakest demon will always manifest first. “The strongest tend to hide; in the meantime they send out the smaller ones,” says Father Nanni.

  Some demons seem to be actively antagonistic toward one another. Father Daniel (who became an exorcist briefly in Rome in 2006) had to schedule two possessed people he was seeing on different days. The instant they saw each other, their demons would manifest and become so violently enraged that they would often come to blows. And yet, even while some apparently despise one another, other groups seem to be able to work together. A stronger demon— or perhaps the leader of the possessing demon—will often come to the aid of a weaker demon. Most often, this will happen during the Ritual, in which the exorcist will discern that he is dealing with a stronger demon, or in between exorcisms, when the character of the demon (and its name) will change from one session to the next.

  As for Giovanna, there was no way for Father Gary to know the hierarchy of her demon. He had been too engrossed in reining her in to hear whether Father Carmine had addressed the demon by name. Later, Father Daniel would speculate that the case was one of the rarest of rare instances—an actual Satanic possession.

  ON THE WAY HOME FROM SAN LORENZO, the bus was jammed with tourists and Saturday afternoon commuters wearing bulky winter coats. The windows were fogged from breath and body heat and the overhead fans blasting hot air. Father Gary had only been able to get a few feet inside the front door and stood crushed between the driver's compartment and the mass of bodies swaying along with the lurching bus. It was a weird juxtaposition to be surrounded by so much humanity after the events he'd just experienced at San Lorenzo. Replaying the exorcism in his mind, he couldn't get over the way the demon had looked at him. The gaze seemed to penetrate his very soul, as if the demon had been able to read him.

  Numerous exorcists have attested that they are constantly watched by the demon. Many, if not all, have had strange moments when their lives have been touched by an evil presence. Father Bamonte remembers an exorcism when a demon somehow knew that he was suffering from rheumatism. “How are your bones feeling this morning?” the demon asked him sarcastically. Father Carmine once had a demon mock a recent trip he had taken, saying, “How stupid you are to think that visiting Lourdes would actually help you,” even though he hadn't mentioned to the person he was praying over that he was going.

  “The spiritual dimension is adjoining to the material one— [angels and
demons] live between us and they see us but we do not see them,” explains Father Nanni. “From a biblical perspective, their function is one of catching every mistake we make in order to throw them in our face.” It's for this reason that on numerous occasions Satan is referred to as “the accuser,” as in this passage from the Bible: “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven proclaiming, ‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah, for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God’” (Revelation 12:10).

  “This means that the demon is always actively watching people and he gets pleasure when he sees that they are not faithful to God and, as a result, take his side,” says Father Nanni. “He wants humankind to rebel against God as well, and this is the one ‘accusation’ that he can level against an individual at the Last Judgment that has the most weight.”

  For the next few days the experience of having the demon lock eyes with him would continue to dog Father Gary. He wondered what kind of effect such a direct connection would have on him. After his hiking accident, he'd often wondered if God had saved him for a reason. Over the years since then, when something would happen in his life, he would think, Well, maybe this is the reason why. After some time, he stopped worrying about it. However, when he looked back on the series of events that had led him to Rome, there did seem to be a logical sequence at work. His time in the mortuary, his accident, his depression, his belief in healing prayer—had God somehow been grooming him to be an exorcist all along? Ultimately he couldn't say; but he knew that, as a result of those experiences, he would certainly be more motivated to try. And if this was what God wanted him to do, then even if the Devil were somehow watching him, so was God; and that's all that mattered.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LIBERATION