The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist

by Matt Baglio

The Devil's main trick is to make people think they are unworthy of God's forgiveness. This is the biggest lie that the demon gives us, not making us believe in God's mercy.

  —A charismatic individual who assists Father Bamonte during exorcisms

  Father Daniel and Silvia, a hollow-eyed woman of thirty-seven with thinning hair, sat together on a bench across from the shrine. Silvia, wearing a scarf and heavy jacket to ward off the night air, kept her eyes focused on the statue of Mary while Father Daniel, his dark brown robes partially hidden under a black parka, prayed the rosary softly under his breath. It was nearly midnight and the shrine was deserted. Eyeing his watch, Father Daniel wondered if the demon's promise would turn out to be true. Two months before, the demon had proclaimed his departure for this very night. Father Daniel, who normally didn't put much stock in what demons said, remained skeptical. This time, however, over the course of several exorcisms in Rome, the demon had been very precise, giving not only the date, but the time and place—at the stroke of midnight in Lourdes, France.

  Silvia continued to finger her rosary beads as she prayed, rocking slightly. Father Daniel was trying not to get his hopes up. Her possession had been a terribly trying case, lasting more than twelve years (though he had been praying over her for only eight months) and bringing her to the brink of suicide.

  As the minute hand ticked closer to midnight, Father Daniel wondered what would signify her liberation. Would the demon depart violently or would she vomit up a talisman? He braced himself. His mind returned to the rosary, and he lost track of the time. They continued to pray for several minutes, when suddenly Silvia let out a deep, guttural sigh, as if some invisible hand were pushing on her abdomen: “Huhhhhhhhhh.”

  He looked up, studying her. She had a slightly puzzled expression on her face.

  He scrutinized her carefully to see if the sigh was a prelude to something more. Silvia sat completely still. Finally she turned, looking a little unsure.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said, thinking about it.

  “Anything else?” he persisted.

  She shook her head no.

  He waited for her to add something, but she didn't. Remembering, he looked down at his watch and saw that it was only a few minutes after midnight. She was not wearing a watch herself, so she was unaware of the precise time.

  “Let's say a prayer of thanksgiving together,” he suggested, secretly hoping that this wasn't a nefarious ruse on the part of the demon.

  They prayed for several minutes, while Silvia's mood continued to lighten. She wiped away tears as the realization of what had happened dawned on her. The demon was finally gone.

  A week later, back in Rome, still hesitant to declare victory, Father Daniel sent her to Father Amorth, who prayed over her. After two sessions in which she showed no reaction, he said another prayer of thanksgiving, sang a hymn, and declared her “healed.” Silvia's long ordeal was indeed over.

  IT CAN TAKE A LONG TIME for a person to become liberated, and Father Gary had yet to see it happen, though Father Carmine had told him about improvements in some of their “regulars.” At one point, Sister Janica hadn't been able to even get out of bed. Another young woman who had been unable to study was now going to the university full-time. But for Father Gary, who had only recently met these people, it was hard to gauge any true progress. On one occasion, he thought Sister Janica seemed a little better. After one exorcism toward the end of his stint with Father Carmine, she actually smiled at him and kissed his hand.

  Exorcism is not a magic formula. There are three factors, say exorcists, to consider when it comes to liberation: the behavior of the victim, the action of the exorcist, and the permission of God. All three are important, yet obviously to varying degrees. Essentially, liberation comes when the Spirit of God commands the demon to depart. In an exorcism, of course, it is the exorcist who, as a representative of the Catholic Church and by invoking the name of Jesus Christ, does this. And while this action is important, God is still the one doing the heavy lifting. As Father Matteo La Grua states, “Liberation is a gift from God, and God can liberate when He wants and how He wants, even without the intervention of man.” The effectiveness of God's presence depends, however, in large part on the cooperation of the victim and to a lesser extent on the faith of the exorcist. A good analogy is a person who burns an ant by focusing sunbeams through a magnifying lens— the sunlight represents the Spirit of God and the lens the person who accepts God's love, focusing it on the ant, which of course is the demon.

  In order for any exorcism to work, victims must cooperate with the exorcist. They must renounce the demon and any sins or actions that may have led them to become possessed; they also should pray and return to practicing the sacraments. (Not everybody has to be a Catholic, or convert to become liberated, though some do. Father Amorth says he has exorcized Muslims and Hindus on rare occasions, but mentions that he will pray the Ritual using the name of Jesus Christ. “I also ask them to fulfill their spiritual duties. For example, Muslims have the obligation to pray and so I tell them to do so. Otherwise I tell them to be a good person, an honest person who fulfills their professional and moral duties.”)

  The sacrament of reconciliation, say exorcists, is incredibly important. “Exorcism can drive a demon out of a person's body; confession can drive evil out of a person's soul. Confession not only forgives, but heals our soul and fills it with light,” writes Father José Antonio Fortea.

  Liberation can be a particularly drawn out process when the person has strayed far from God, or in some cases has joined a satanic cult. Another difficult hurdle to overcome, claim exorcists, is the victim's inability to forgive. “Sincere forgiveness, which includes prayer on that person's behalf and having masses said for the person's conversion, often breaks open a deadlocked situation and helps speed up the healing,” writes Father Amorth.

  This is a difficult process for the demonized person to undergo, and the demon will attempt to stop it, say exorcists, attacking internally (by convincing the person that he or she is only crazy, not possessed, and so doesn't need an exorcism) or by intervening directly (for instance, causing such fatigue that the victim can't get out of bed). According to Anna, when she was close to liberation, the demon almost convinced her that she was imagining everything, even putting the thought in her mind that Father Bamonte was trying to take advantage of her by recording her exorcism to write about it in a book, for his own benefit. Father Bamonte freed her from this obsession by tricking the demon into guessing the contents of a sealed envelope. When the demon knew what was in the envelope, Anna says her conviction was affirmed. After this incident, Anna's sense of desperation faded and she began to pray with renewed vigor.

  Obviously an exorcist needs to have a strong spiritual core. “An exorcist must live an intense life of prayer and not be afraid,” says Father Bamonte. “If you don't have a strong spiritual life, if you don't have the protection of your faith, how can you be able to fight? Praying, loving God, not committing sins—those are the weapons an exorcist uses.”

  Some demons are apparently more difficult to cast out than others. The duration of the possession is the first and most important element that exorcists look at. A person who has been hit in infancy and then doesn't see an exorcist until adulthood is going to have a much harder time getting rid of the demon that has now become almost a part of his or her identity, say exorcists.

  The strength of the demon can also be another factor, though the most difficult cases are said always to involve a curse. As Father Carmine explains, “There remains a connection between the victim and the one who caused the curse. In those cases it's difficult because it's about the hatred of other people toward the affected person.”

  Unlike a natural illness for which treatment usually brings relief, the process is reversed in demonic possession. Once the demon is discovered, he fights hard to resist the prayers of the exorcism. And even though the person suffers, these attacks are, i
n the big scheme of things, an indication that the victim is headed in the right direction, say exorcists.

  “It can happen that when a person who has been possessed for a very long time gets close to God, he can be hit by a series of bad events. I know this may sound strange, but this is a good sign because it means that the demon is losing; that's why it is reacting like that. You don't have to be discouraged; it is a good sign. I always say, ‘Don't be scared of the demon, be scared of the sin,’” advises Father Bamonte.

  As the exorcist continues to pray the Ritual, and to pray for the victim to return to God, the power of the exorcism begins to weaken the demon. There are several signs that indicate the demon is close to leaving. “He is weaker in the voice, in the ability to manifest in the crisis; he leaves sooner every time. When those exorcisms become weaker and weaker, when the possession time gets shorter and the temporary liberations come sooner than before, it means that he is getting weaker. Also, outside of the exorcism the person's life is more normal,” Father Nanni says.

  At the moment of liberation the demon may offer a “sign” that he is leaving. If the person has been hit by a “spell,” then the demon may indicate that liberation will come when a certain object is vomited. It may even be expelled through the anus or secreted through the skin. Exorcists have seen it all. Father Carmine once saw a woman sweat a green mucuslike substance through her skin. Another sign may be the demon saying a prayer, or reciting a hymn.

  In certain cases, the exorcist may ask for a sign that is directly connected to the suffering the demon may be causing. Father Daniel claims that he once asked that a woman become pregnant as a sign of liberation, because the demon had been preventing it. Sure enough, he says, a month after the woman's liberation, she became pregnant—something that she had been trying unsuccessfully to do for five years.

  An outward sign is generally not necessary. “If the person lives in peace, is no longer disturbed by the demon, can pray, and lives in the grace of God, you know she is liberated,” explains Father Nanni. “If you go back to pray and during another exorcism the crisis starts again, then it means only that the liberation was just temporary.” As a precaution, many exorcists will continue to pray over people a few times even after they have been liberated.

  Once the person has been liberated, the demon will often try to return. Exorcists generally offer a prayer of thanksgiving (Father Davies uses the Gloria, which Catholics recognize from the Sunday liturgy) and ask that the Holy Spirit fill the void left by the departing spirit. In addition, the newly liberated person must continue to live a Christian life and not fall back into the habits or sins that caused the possession in the first place, or else there is a high risk of becoming possessed again, this time worse than before (Matthew 12:43-45).

  IN 2003, Beatrice, a forty-six-year-old married woman who worked as a biologist in a medical lab, began experiencing odd phenomena— freak accidents, objects moving around the house on their own, a mysterious force that pushed her mother to the ground, breaking her arm. A year later, burn marks began appearing on all her clothing, always in the same place—on the thigh—and always the same size. Thinking she was losing her mind, she eventually found her way to Father Bamonte, who discerned the presence of three demons. After a grueling two-year battle involving weekly exorcisms, Beatrice was finally freed.

  The first of December, 2006, a day which seemed like any other, was the day in which God permitted my liberation. To tell you the truth, my mood had been pretty down for a few days because, after a period of relative calm on the part of “that one” [the demon], I went back to the old times, when I used to scream, to be agitated and to attack everybody either verbally or physically. While in the past I was usually conscious, feeling as if I was split between the sensations of my own life and those from the demon (to the point of even fearing that I was hallucinating, or that those were just the manifestation of my psychosis), in the last couple months I entered in a deep state of trance. I could only feel rage and the other atrocious sensations of that monster which manifested; and at the end, I could remember only a few things, almost nothing.

  This new situation unfortunately made me think that things, for some mysterious reason, were getting worse. As a matter of fact, even if I continued to trust in God's divine mercy and in the protection of the Blessed Mother, these strong reactions made me think that the demon had somehow regained some strength and that, as a result, the day of my liberation was still very far off. In spite of that, every day I kept giving my life to the Lord and to the Immaculate Virgin.

  In the previous session, I had a huge amount of saliva coming out of my mouth, as if I was “expelling out” all the evil that I still had inside, but in the end “that one” seemed to still be there. The day he left, though, was a special day: It was the Friday after the feast of Christ the King, two days after it would have been the first Sunday of Advent and in one week the Feast of the Immaculate Conception would have started (actually my husband and I had already started reciting the novena for two days). It was basically a marvelous coincidence of sacred events. The exorcism started as usual with the prayers following the formula of the rite; the only difference that manifested after a while was a strong reaction by the demon to the words “For Christ, with Christ and in Christ.” It seemed as if he had never heard them before. He started to become very agitated, he lost all his usual arrogance and became desperate. He tried to bite the hands of the people who were trying to hold him or to throw away the crucifix that the exorcist had put on my chest and also (with my great sorrow) to spit on it. All of a sudden (I don't remember the sequence of the events; maybe it was when the exorcist invoked Mary), I felt hit by a huge wave of a very bright white light—it was all encompassing, a light that I could perceive and feel as well, and it gave me a sensation of very sweet peace while for the demon it provoked atrocious pain.

  Once again I felt like I was splitting, dividing between my own sensations and “his.” If I closed my eyes I could see in my mind's eye that we were in a deep shadow and so I knew that the light that was embracing me was a spiritual one. Closing my eyes again, I could abo perceive that this same light was stabbing the eyes of the monster like a thousand swords. Meanwhile the monster was screaming, moving like crazy, saying that the veil of Mary (whom he referred to as “that one”) was suffocating him and causing him a huge amount of pain, to the point of causing him to go into terrible, indescribable spasms. Toward the end he launched a scream as he never did before and I felt rent in two, as if somebody turned me inside out.

  Then all of a sudden there was calm and silence and I opened my eyes, coming out of the trance by myself. Then Father Francesco [Bamonte] blessed me, ending the rite. I had no idea that something out of the ordinary had happened. In fact, as I said, the three days leading up to the exorcism were terrible for me, and all through that time I had felt a growing rage and a huge sense of mental confusion mixed with a lack of hope. I was familiar with all those kinds of emotions, but I never felt them in such an intensive way. It seemed as if my life was about to end. After the exorcism, I started to feel a little better again, and from that moment I started to improve more and more.

  During the exorcism two Fridays later I remained conscious; and even though I closed my eyes, when Father Francesco checked them in order to see how my pupils looked, they stayed in the normal position. From the very beginning of the rite, my mind started to form thoughts in which I denied with all my will any kind of “cooperation” with the demon, I told “him” that with the help and the strength of God, I would never allow him any kind of power over me, something I had never been able to do before.

  When the rite was nearing completion, Father Francesco suggested to his helpers that they open the Bible and read a passage. One of them opened the Bible at random and they read a passage from the Gospel of Luke in which Jesus reads in the synagogue of Nazareth. “When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his
custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free” (Luke 4:16-18). That passage of the Gospel was the marvelous confirmation of what had just happened: the Lord liberated me! While I was crying tears of joy, I started to thank the Lord and the Immaculate Virgin, which I will continue to do for as long as I live.

  FOR MANY YEARS, the scientific and medical community scorned the idea that a person could be “healed” through prayers or ritualistic ceremonies like exorcism. Today, however, the ability of certain healing rituals to offer genuine relief is no longer disputed—numerous anthropologists have documented that people have recovered from problems varying from depression, addictive behavior, or anxiety to even more severe ailments, including life-threatening diseases, through such ceremonies. So how does science account for “anomalous healing”?

  At the core of these experiences lies the difference between “healing” and “curing.” According to Stanley Krippner and Jeanne Achter-berg in the book Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence, for many indigenous people “healing” means restoring a person's physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual capacities, while “curing” usually refers to overcoming a disease that is primarily biological in nature.

  Scientists and doctors have tried a variety of methods in an attempt to explain how anomalous healing experiences may actually work. In looking at spirit possession in Haiti, for example, scholar Steve Mizrach came to the conclusion that voodoo possession can be considered a kind of psychotherapy or “folk therapy.” In addition, I. M. Lewis, author of Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession, surmised that the “psychologically highly charged atmosphere” of a séance could be effective in treating certain neurotic or psychosomatic disturbances, adding that even in the case of organic illnesses, he thought it might also provide a benefit simply by strengthening the patient's will to recover.