Reviewing A Biography On Exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth & What We Can Learn From His Life
Father Gabriel Amorth was one of the most famous exorcists of the Church in the latter-half of the 20th century. What did he teach and what can we learn from his life?
In the spring of 2023, The Pope’s Exorcist, staring Russell Crowe, came out and amassed a great deal of attention. The movie is based on the 1990 book An Exorcist Tells His Story and the 1992 book An Exorcist: More Stories by Father Gabriele Amorth, an Italian Catholic priest who served as an exorcist for the Diocese of Rome in 1986 until his death in 2016, while also being a Pauline priest ordained in 1954. Amorth founded the International Association of Exorcists in 1990, and I decided to read a biography on this holy and well-known priest by Domenico Agasso released by TAN Books last June (Fr. Gabriele Amorth: Rome’s Exorcist). This post will review the most important parts of the biography on Father Amorth, and the lessons that we can learn from his life to aid us in our own spiritual journey towards Heaven.
In seminary, his spiritual father told him: “How do you know if you are doing God’s Will? You can be sure you are on the right path only if you obey your bishop.”1
Reflecting on why he was chose on his new assignment as an exorcist, Father Amorth acknowledged: “The struggle between good and evil, between Satan and Christ, goes back to the beginning. Two armies have always fought for supremacy over the world: the army of Satan and the army of Christ. No one knows why Satan exists, why one of the most beautiful and noble angels in heaven decided at some point to rebel against God, becoming the prince of darkness. The fact is that he, Satan, exists and only wants one thing: to bring the world to self-destruction and man to eternal damnation. In this seemingly endless struggle, the pope has a key role. It is he, perhaps first and foremost, who must fight so that the gates of hell do not prevail against the Church. Among men, a special role is played by exorcists. They are like the tips of diamonds in this army that counters evil with good. They are priests chosen to drive out the extraordinary presence of Satan and his army- the demons hierarchically subjugated to Satan- from man and, therefore, from the world.”2
At this time of his new assignment, Father Amorth prayed: “Mother of God, I accept this assignment, but protect me with your mantle.” To him: “It was a simple plea with a few, but heartfelt words. I wanted to obey my bishop, and I placed all my fears in the hands of Our Lady.” And he asked: “Who am I to fight the prince of darkness? I was no one. But God is everything. The devil is not fought with one’s own strength, but with that of heaven.” At his ordination in 1954, he stated: “The mission of a priest is beyond human abilities, but [the priest] must not be dismayed by this: to carry out his work, he is granted an overabundance of graces which will never fail him. Therefore, even a petty and unsuitable man, by the mere fact of being a priest, is equipped with a supernatural strength that allows him to accomplish exceptional things.”3
Father Candido Amantini told him: “You have to do two things. First. Get an exorcism ritual. It is in Latin. Read the twenty-one rules that precede the Rite. Commit them to memory. Without those rules, you will be defeated. Second. Start [practicing] exorcisms at home, by yourself.” Moreover: “What are the signs of the presence of the devil? Speaking unfamiliar languages fluently or understanding others who speak them; knowing distant or hidden facts; showing strength superior to one’s age or natural condition, and other phenomena of this kind.”4
During his first exorcism on February 21, 1987 with a farmer (which took numerous sessions, as is common- according to Father Amorth): “Through his voice, Satan was speaking to me. He spat out insults, blasphemies, accusations, and threats. Then at a certain point, he said to me: ‘Priest, go away. Leave me alone.’ ‘You go away,’ I responded to him.’ ‘Please, priest, go away. I can do nothing against you.’ ‘Tell me, in the name of Christ, why can you not do anything?’ ‘Because you are too protected by your Lady. Your Lady with her mantle surrounds you, and I cannot reach you.’”5
At one point during this initial exorcism, “the [possessed] farmer raises his head suddenly and stares at me. In the same instant, he explodes in an angry, frightening scream. He turns red and starts screaming invectives in English. ‘Priest, stop it! Shut up, shut up, shut up!’ He lashes out with curses, swear words, and threats.”6 As he sped up the ritual, “The possessed man continues to scream in English: ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’ He spits on the ground and on me. He is furious. He’s like a lion about to pounce. It is evident that his prey is me.” As Father Amorth said the Praecipio tibi and: “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,” the possessed man: “continues to scream…. the scream becomes a howl…. his eyes roll backwards. His head hangs behind the back of the chair. The scream continues in a frightening high pitch.” Soon, “his cry suddenly fades and he looks at me. A little bit of drool comes out of his mouth.” When Father Amorth commanded: “And now tell me, unclean spirit, who are you? Tell me your name! Tell me, in the name of Jesus Christ, your name!” His response “chilled” him: “‘I am Lucifer,’ he says [in English] in a low voice, slowly pronouncing all the syllables. ‘I am Lucifer.’” After more prayers for the Rite of exorcism were recited: “The possessed starts to howl again. His head is thrown back again behind the back of the chair. His back is curved.” The air: “becomes cold, terribly cold. Father Candido had warned me of sudden changes in temperature.”7
Shortly after: “something unexpected occurs. It was an event that would never happen again in the course of my long career as an exorcist. The possessed becomes like a piece of wood. His legs go forward. His head is stretched back. He starts to levitate. He rises horizontally half a meter above the back of the chair. For several minutes, he remains there motionless, suspended in the air.” An Italian-born and speaking priest performing an exorcism in Italy, the devil then told him in English: “I’ll be out on 21 June at 3:00 p.m. I’ll be out on 21 June at 3:00 p.m.” This was a Sunday (the day of the week on which we celebrate the Resurrection of Our Lord), and perhaps the time, three-o-clock, stood for the hour of mercy in which Our Lord was killed on the Cross; very fitting! He performed this exorcism each week until this date, and when it came, he asked the recently-possessed man “to recite the Ave Maria with me. He says it without going into a rage. I ask him to tell me what happened on the day Lucifer said he was going to leave him. He said, ‘As I do every day, I went to work in the fields alone. In the early afternoon, I decided to take a ride on the tractor. At 3:00 p.m., I felt like screaming very loud. I think I bellowed out a terrifying scream. At the end of the scream, I felt free. I don’t know how to explain it. I was free.”8
However, this wasn’t always the case. Father Amorth wrote: “I once had a very difficult case. There was a girl I couldn’t free. I asked the devil: ‘When will you leave her?’ To which he replied: ‘On December 8.’ This is a significant date, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Then, when 8 December arrived, I called her and did a long exorcism, but she still hadn’t broken free. After five and a half hours or exorcism, she finally seemed free. She jumped for joy with tears of happiness. She really seemed free. After a week, however, she was the same as before. I asked the devil: ‘Why didn’t you leave? You said you were leaving on 8 December, why didn’t you go away?’ With a scornful voice, he said: ‘Didn’t they ever tell you that I’m a liar? Didn’t they teach you that I lie.’”9 Our Lord told the Jews who rejected Him: “As it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do. You are doing the deeds of your father.’ They said to Him, ‘We were not born as a result of sexual immorality; we have one Father: God.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I came forth from God and am here; for I have not even come on My own, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I say the truth, you do not believe Me. Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? The one who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God,” (John 8:40-47).
We have all likely heard of the problem of evil: “Why does God allow the possession of others and evils in our world?” Father Amorth reasoned: “We look very much at this world, while God looks very much at eternity. Therefore, it is probable that he allows possession to obtain some advantage for souls that is valid for eternity.”10
In another case, Father Amorth recounts: “Often Satan is not alone in the bodies of people he possesses. Sometimes there are many demons. Jesus often speaks of legions. Once, I was exorcising a nun. There was a tremendous amount of possession. She was vomiting everything. ‘How many are you?’ I asked. ‘Legions, legions, legions,’ they responded. While I exorcised her, she was constantly squirming. And she jumped from wall to wall like a monkey. It was impossible to keep her still.”11
In response to those who say we need not care about the influence of the devil because of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, he explains: “Yes, that’s true, He conquered everything. But this victory must be applied and must be embodied in the life of each of us. Christ has won, but His victory for us must be reaffirmed day after day. Our condition as men imposes this on us. The devil’s action has not been completely annulled. The devil was not destroyed. The Gospel says that the devil exists and that he even tempted Christ. Jesus gave weapons. He gave them to us, too, to overcome him. The devil can still tempt us, we can all be tempted, as evidenced by the prayer against the evil one that Jesus Himself taught us- the Our Father.”12
On modernism, Father Amorth states: “For decades in seminaries and ecclesiastical universities, a part of dogmatic theology has been removed- the part that speaks of God the Creator, of angels, of proof of their existence, and of the rebellion of demons. Thus, in formation programs, demons no longer exist. One no longer (or almost no longer) studies spiritual theology that deals with the ordinary action of the devil, temptation, and his extraordinary action, possession and curses, and, consequently, their remedies, no longer believed in. This incredulity is confirmed in never having performed or witnessed one. Moral theology no longer teaches the part that deals with certain sins against the first Commandment: sorcery, necromancy, spiritism; that is, the forms of superstition most condemned by the Bible and most widespread today. For this reason, the people of God have not been catechized. And when they approach priests on these matters, they are almost always faced with a wall of ignorance and misunderstanding.”13 And: “The disbelief in the existence of Satan is widespread and does not permit people to defend themselves from the enemy, to be saved from his infernal clutches.”14 Recognizing the source of evil is the first step to defeating it.
On Satan, Father Amorth explained: “He attacks priests and those consecrated to God, above all, because by striking a priest, he can drag many others to hell. We think of all those priests who have soiled their garments through the sexual abuse of minors. These are demonic acts. What can be more perverse than such a thing? Satan is total perversion. It is he who enters hearts and leads people to actions like this. The devil attacks priests more than anyone. There is only one way not to be overcome: by prayer and fasting. A priest who sexually abused a child causes an avalanche of suffering and destruction. It is a most grievous fault. This is the greatest victory of Satan over the Church: convincing those people who should be exclusively to Christ to work for the opposite- exclusively for the devil.”15
Pope Paul VI, on November 15, 1972, at a Wednesday audience in Nervi Hall, stated: “One of the greatest needs of the Church today is to defend itself against the evil we call the devil. He is a terrible reality. [He is] mysterious and fearful… Just saying this name, in our time, can seem simplistic, or even superstitious and not real.” However, the Holy Father explained, “He is the number one enemy, he is the temper par excellence. We know that this dark, contorted being truly exists and still operates with treacherous cunning. He is the hidden enemy who sows errors and misfortunes in human history.” Additionally, he stated: “The presence of Satan is a very important chapter within Catholic doctrine to restudy, while today he is little [studied]… Today one prefers to appear strong and without prejudice, to pose as positivists, except to then believe in so many gratuitous magical or popular superstitions, or worse to open one’s soul… to the libertine experiences of the senses, to the deleterious [experiences] of drugs, as well as the ideological seductions of fashionable errors, these cracks through which the Evil One can easily penetrate and alter the human mentality.”
Father Amorth recounted: “Satan spoke to me at length about John Paul II. I still remember the hoarse voice of the prince of darkness. He spoke to me just before he left the person he had possessed. It was like a confession he wanted to make to me before I was able to drive him out with the power of Christ. Of course, his words may have been a lie. But they still deserve to be repeated because they tell us something. He said, ‘Karol Wojtyla, I hate him. We all hate him. Wojtyla destroyed my plans. I wanted to destroy the world, but it was he who made communism fall in Russia and Eastern Europe before I succeeded in my project. Those were years in which entire countries lived in terror. I put them in a permanent state of terror. The Second World War was a masterpiece of mine. But what followed later- communism with millions of deaths and above all the hunger and suffering of entire populations- was icing on the cake that surpassed the cake itself in delectability. The Pole helped bring the light back. And he took many young people out of my hands. They were mine. I initiated them into evil. They lived for me, some knowingly, some unknowingly. He took them from me. I hate him for it. And I will hate him forever.” He observed: “When John Paul II is named during an exorcism, the possessed literally foams with anger… When Padre Pio of Pietrelcina is named, the devil goes mad and becomes furious and agitated. But when John Paul II is named, Satan becomes even more brutal and uncontrollable. Satan hates John Paul II and often says, ‘I hate him with greater intensity than Padre Pio.’” Monsignor Andrea Gemma stated that during an exorcism, the devil told him: “The old man (referring to John Paul II) did enormous damage to us, but the one there now is worse,” referring to Pope Benedict XVI.16
Why did the devil hate Pope Benedict XVI so fervently? Father Gabriele Amorth reasoned: “The way in which Benedict XVI performs the liturgy, his respect for the rules, and his rigor and posture are very effective against Satan. The liturgy celebrated by the Pope celebrates the Eucharist.” After the Pope’s resignation in 2013, Father Amorth stated: “Pope Benedict XVI has done many things for exorcists, starting with the drafting of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and for allowing us exorcists to be able to administer the sacramental of exorcism not only to those who suffer diabolical possession, but also to those who suffer from diabolical disturbances, such as diabolical vexation and infestation.”17
In his apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, Pope Francis wrote that the devil is not a “myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea.” Instead, he is a powerful being: “We will not admit the existence of the devil if we insist on regarding life by empirical standards alone, without a supernatural understanding. It is precisely the conviction that this malign power is present in our midst that enables us to understand how evil can at times have so much destructive force.” Likewise, in his homily of the Pentecost Mass, on May 23, 2021, our Holy Father warned: “Dear sisters, dear brothers, if you feel the darkness of solitude, if you feel that an obstacle within you blocks the way to hope, if your heart has a festering wound, if you can see no way out, then open your heart to the Holy Spirit. St. Bonaventure tells us that, ‘where the trials are greater, he brings greater comfort, not like the world, which comforts and flatters us when things go well, but derides and condemns us when they do not,’ (Homily in the Octave of the Ascension). That is what the world does, that is especially what the hostile spirit, the devil, does. First, he flatters us and makes us feel invincible (for the blandishments of the devil can feed our vanity); then he flings us down and makes us feel that we are failures. He toys with us. he does everything to cast us down, whereas the Spirit of the risen Lord wants to raise us up.”
Msgr. John Essff, an exorcist of forty years, stated: “Confession is more powerful than an exorcism. One is a sacrament and the other is a blessing. One confession is worth 100 exorcisms. The devil wants to destroy the soul and the soul is healed by confession. If people want to decrease the work of Satan, they should increase the use of confession. Once the confessional line gets thin, the activity of Satan increases. To decrease the work of Satan, increase the use of confession.” This is so true: while sinful activity- especially grave sin- can leave you vulnerable to diabolic influence (possibly even outright possession), it’s not always true that it is only grave sinners far from the faith may be possessed by the demonic. Demonic possession does not mean that the devil is occupying your soul- but only the physical body- in hopes that he will destroy the lives of you and other persons around you- with eternal damnation as the ultimate goal for as many souls as possible- since he is so hateful of our ability to be redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ and also of the purity of Our Lady.
The most important thing that we need to do is best position our spiritual life to prevent diabolic influence and strive for perfection of the soul by the grace of God with Heaven as our sight; while we are all imperfect sinners who will never be perfect in this life, this will best weaken the influence the demonic forces can have in our life. We should avoid mortal sin, and whether we fall in grave sin or venial matters, we must get back up and get to confession as soon as possible to avoid Hell and, above all, out of love for God (charity). When we are separated from God due to grave sin, we are defenseless against the Evil One and vulnerable to his assaults at any time.
If you haven’t seen it already, I strongly encourage you to read my post: A Defense of The Sacrament of Confession: God's Mercy Through The Priest; it is truly one of the most thorough articles on the matter and includes words of encouragement and practical spiritual advice on how to approach the sacrament which saves us! The devil, the crafty evil one, wants us to either pay no attention to him and deny his existence (or greatly downplay his influence) or to focus all our energy on him. In reality, however, the best exorcists and saints of history tell us to focus on Our Lord and Our Lady; it is by the weapon of the Rosary and a devotion to the faith of the Church that Our Merciful Lord established that we will conquer the devil in our lives and society. While the cases of demonic possession are fascinating, Father Chad Ripperger, an exorcist and psychology author famous for his internet talks on the channel Sensus Fidelium says that, in actuality, the demons are “boring” and quite redundant, while, Our Lord and Our Lady, are truly the uniquely beautiful sources we must focus on.
We must also be very careful not to invest too much energy in studying these cases- just as we must not spend too much energy on examining serial killers, debating politics, or consuming contents of media, because it can drain us and leave us spiritually weaker and in a position more suitable for the devil to attack us. We must let the consecrated experts with thee authority of Christ do most of the work in this area, and we must remember that each of us is called to use our particular skills and gifts in a unique way, and this also should reflect our state in life. For example, it would not be prudent for a mother with children at home to be filling her mind with such content, nor for children to watch certain horror films due to their vulnerability. Moreover, how anyone can deny the Catholic faith knowing that it alone, with the priests who have the authority of Jesus through holy orders and apostolic succession, can perform exorcisms and has done so successfully in so many cases, it unthinkable. As I noted in my last post reviewing Trent Horn’s book Devil’s Advocate, it would take 100% of alleged supernatural experiences being false to prove Catholicism false, whereas it only takes one miracle (even in the presence of many false “miracles) to show that the supernatural exists and Catholicism is true; what’s more likely: that every single alleged supernatural encounter is false, or one is true, and thus: the existence of the supernatural, and in the case of exorcisms, the authority of the priest and the battle of good and evil in the Lord Jesus Christ & the devil?
Trust in the Lord, stay close to Our Lady, surround yourselves with good company, frequently visit the sacrament of confession and unite yourself to Our Lord in Holy Communion, and may we all learn from the saintly life of Father Gabriele Amorth!
Domenico Agasso, Fr. Gabriele Amorth: Rome’s Exorcist (TAN Books, 2023), p. 87.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, pp. 89-90.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, p. 91.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, p. 93.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, pp. 91-92.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, p. 115.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, pp. 115-119.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, pp. 120-122.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, p. 126.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, p. 127.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, pp. 128-129.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, p. 142.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, p. 145.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, p. 146.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, pp. 176-177.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, pp. 99-100.
Agasso, Rome’s Exorcist, p. 101.