The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist (18 page)

From that point on, I started to feel really sick. I had problems with my ovaries, problems with my stomach, headaches. The worst thing that ever happened to me physically was that one morning I
woke up with one side of my body totally numb. I went to the hospital and they diagnosed me with multiple sclerosis.

I had two major problems: first my arm and then my leg. They were totally numb; I didn't feel them anymore. The doctors were not very optimistic. I would have lost the use of my limbs sooner or later, but instead I followed the treatment of cortisone together with the blessings and in my case the illness froze completely. Slowly it is going away. The doctors want me to continue with the cortisone, but I would prefer not to do it
—
especially now that I put myself in the hands of the Lord. But I have to say that Father Alberto always tells me to do it because he says that the Lord put science in the hands of man.

Around this time I began seeing Father Francesco [Bamonte], and my husband came with me to the exorcisms. All this time I continued to doubt myself, to doubt that I needed an exorcism. I still thought I was making everything up to get attention. Father Francesco did a little test.

In order to prove that she wasn't imagining everything, Father Bamonte brought in a plastic shopping bag with an object sealed inside. He ordered the demon in the name of Jesus Christ to reveal what the object was. At first the demon resisted, but eventually, as Father Bamonte insisted, the demon correctly identified the object: a pair of gloves that belonged to Padre Pio.

That scared me a little, but I knew then that I wasn't crazy, so I understood and I felt calm. I said to myself, “Okay, now we are going to get rid of him.”

After we got married we went on a pilgrimage for our honeymoon to various churches and holy sites around Italy, traveling to Saint Gemma in Lucca, a person I felt particularly close to since I read about her life. At the time I had been told that I couldn't become pregnant and so I asked for her intercession. As soon as I left Saint Gemma's tomb, I started to feel really bad. I was folded in two with pain in my ovaries and uterus. I was hospitalized and diagnosed with a cyst of five centimeters. When I got to Rome, it had grown to
ten centimeters. I was supposed to have surgery but slowly it started to become smaller and smaller on its own, something I abo attribute to the prayers of the community (I was a member of a prayer group then and we always helped each other). I also think that the prayers of my mother helped a lot as well. Anyway, I followed the therapy prescribed by the hospital and two months later I got pregnant, and now I have a wonderful eight-month-old baby.

When I got married I thought I would have been liberated, but it didn't happen. During the exorcisms the demon began to lash out at my husband. I said terrible things to him there, and it happened even at home.

I remember one night I sat down with my husband to have dinner. My husband blessed the food and after that I don't remember what happened. I woke up on the bed with my arms locked in front of me and my husband standing nearby, out of breath, looking slightly shocked. When I asked him what had happened, at first he didn't want to tell me. While he had been blessing the food, the demon had manifested and told him, “Pay attention because now you are going to choke. I know you are scared of me. You pretend you're not, but I know you are.” At one point the demon told my husband, “You make me so mad because I can't touch you! I'm not allowed to touch you.”

Another time, my husband and I were watching a movie on TV one night about Pope John Paul II, and at one point I broke down in tears. My husband tried to console me, saying, “Don't cry, John Paul II is in the sky and he prays for you.” But then I turned on him and started to say bad words because it wasn't me. It was the demon.

Thank God my husband knew how to handle it. He didn't answer; he started to pray.

Throughout this time I kept having obsessive thoughts. Every time I had to come to see Father Francesco, I had this thought in my mind like “Where are you going? Now you are going to tell the priest a bunch of lies, you are going to look in his eyes and you are going to lie to him,” and in my mind I told him the most terrible things.

I felt this constant heaviness on me. Like a weight. It was a chore
to do anything. I couldn't clean, I couldn't wash my baby because it took too much of an effort. I was exhausted. Father Francesco frayed over me and I began to get better. Slowly I felt the weight lifting.

After the exorcisms I feel tired, hut I can see things clearer and the pain goes away. Father Francesco has made me understand that I wasn't crazy. I wouldn't have believed that I was possessed, but the exorcisms have helped me to understand it. I would never have imagined that things like this could happen but now I know. All I can say is that if the Lord created exorcists, there must be a reason for it. Satan exists and works on people without their knowing it. If I hadn't had people praying for me probably I wouldn't be here now.

A
NNA WAS EVENTUALLY LIBERATED
in November 2006 (her liberation was recounted in the prologue) and remains free of the symptoms. Father Bamonte believes that her possession was probably caused by a satanic ritual performed four generations ago by members of her family who sought to gain power by sacrificing an infant to a demon (this was the ritual that Anna herself said she saw when Father Alberto prayed over her). And though he was never able to verify the claim, according to Father Bamonte, during the exorcisms, the demon would often hum the singsong chant used by the participants of this ritual. The chant sounded like a jingle used in a TV commercial for a popular aperitif. When the commercial came on TV, Anna would feel compelled to quickly change the channel without realizing why.

O
NE DAY AFTER PERFORMING EXORCISMS
, Father Gary decided to stay in San Lorenzo and have dinner with Father Carmine. While he considered Father Carmine to be a “holy man,” there was no denying that there was a distance between them. Much of it was cultural, and because of the language barrier as well. But there was something else, too—a sort of professional wariness that comes from two people meeting to perform an arduous task under unpleasant circumstances.

They ate inside a horseshoe-shaped dining hall that offered little in the way of decorations beyond the scuffs and dings that come from long continuous use. The meal was staggered in two shifts, with Father Gary and Father Carmine sharing the space with about eight other friars. Since he was the superior, Father Carmine sat at the head of the table, while Father Gary took a place near the end, next to a layman in his seventies, who lived at the convent and taught English as a second language. As Father Gary talked and enjoyed dinner with the layman, he noticed that Father Carmine's demeanor here was very different from what he displayed at his office. He appeared much more relaxed and conversed with the other priests as he presided over the meal. Because the juxtaposition was so striking, Father Gary realized that it must have been hard for Father Carmine and his fellow exorcists to maintain any sense of equilibrium.

What Father Gary didn't realize was that, even though Father Carmine knew it needed to be done, he didn't like training new exorcists. “Yes, apprenticeships are necessary,” Father Carmine would say later. “In order to become an exorcist, you need to apprentice, to see and have experience; but you can't say it is an enjoyable thing. I prefer to teach beautiful things, good and holy things, things of God. Personally I thank God for this job’ because it puts me in touch with a supernatural world and so my faith grows as a result. However, that does not make it a beautiful job.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A PASTORAL APPROACH

“We can do only our best, and then we must leave the final decision up to God.”

—
Father Candido Amantini, as quoted in
An Exorcist Tells His Story,
by Father Gabriele Amorth

B
y February Father Gary had settled into a comfortable routine. After morning mass he would usually do some reading, either up in his room or in the NAC library. Then in the evenings on Monday through Thursday he would see exorcisms at San Lorenzo until dinner. On Thursday morning he would head out to the Regina Apos-tolorum and then in the afternoon over to his class on the history of spirituality at the Angelicum.

About this time, an American exorcist, Father Vince Lampert, from the diocese of Indianapolis, got in touch. In Rome to participate in the continuing education program at the NAC, Father Vince had recently been nominated exorcist and figured that it would be a good idea to participate in a few exorcisms while he was in town. Like Father Gary, when his archbishop had appointed him exorcist, he'd told him that “he had no idea what he was asking [him] to do.”

A slender, thoughtful man whose unedited bluntness comes off as a bit gruff, Father Vince is nonetheless very personable and quick to laugh at a good joke. Meeting one night for dinner in a trattoria near Saint Peter's, the two priests immediately hit it off. As they got to know each other, Father Vince filled Father Gary in about the circumstances that led to his nomination and his concern (like most American exorcists) that he had no training and wasn't sure where he should begin.

Father Gary, for his part, was candid about his own background. He had checked with Father Carmine about bringing Father Vince along, but he wanted to prepare him—remembering his own feelings of disappointment alternating with shock.

As he listened, Father Vince's favorable impression of Father Gary grew. This was not a priest that was out to bag demons and make a name for himself, but somebody who leveled with him and told him that some of the victim's reactions were downright “odd.”

The two decided they would meet the following Monday at the Casa first and then together go to San Lorenzo on the bus.

Like any novice, Father Gary included, Father Vince had been growing more and more anxious about what he might see in his first exorcism. He'd spent the previous day readying himself in the only way he knew how, going to confession and spending extra time in prayer. He had purposefully tried to steer clear of films like
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
(some priests at the NAC had watched it one night) because he didn't want to be prejudiced. Before he left the NAC that afternoon, he told a few fellow priests where he was going; they replied that they would pray for him.

On the bus, his apprehension grew. Father Gary filled him in on the protocol and what he might expect to see, displaying a demeanor that helped calm his nerves. When they arrived at San Lorenzo, the usual crowd had already gathered in the courtyard. And as they waited, Father Gary gave Father Vince what little history he could on the various people.

After the first night, the two stopped to have a coffee and decompress. That night had been a particularly violent one. A woman in her early forties with sharp, attractive features and shoulder-length black hair had shaken so violently that Father Vince had seen her levitate five inches off the chair, at which point Father Carmine had simply pushed her back down with the palm of his hand. Father Gary, who was momentarily engrossed in the
Ritual
book at the time, had missed it.

Father Vince had several questions. As he was wont to do, Father Carmine had pinched the bridge of the woman's nose, which Father Vince found strange. Father Gary chuckled, telling him that he'd had that same question himself. (Father Carmine would later explain that he pinched the nose because the demon enters through the person's senses.)

Both Father Gary and Father Vince, thinking ahead to the day when the fate of a person's spiritual well-being would rest in their hands, were keen to learn practical tips. Since the
Ritual
is imprecise on how an exorcism should be performed, their chief concerns were avoiding mistakes. Father Gary, for one, had read that if the exorcist went about it wrong, he could actually open himself up spiritually to an attack. One author had even gone so far as to suggest that if the exorcist touched the person during an exorcism, the demon could enter into him.

Father Carmine scoffed at this. ‘Absolutely not. It's not a disease,” he would later say. However, there were dangers. Father Carmine was adamant about not engaging the demon.

“Whenever the demon talks, you should never listen to him. You should never ask questions to the demon in order to know something hidden; this is a very serious mistake. A priest is not to ask the demon anything that you don't already know the answer to [for instance, “Why did you try to put yourself above God when you know He is all-powerful?”]. Never ask questions so that the demon could be considered a source of information, never! First of all because he is a liar and so what he says can very well be a lie, and second because you can't give him the honor of being your source of information.”

The
Ritual
does permit the exorcist to ask the demon his name, which in the ancient Hebrew tradition is believed to give one a kind of power over another, also evidenced by the ancient practice that prohibited writing or pronouncing the name of God.

The foundation of asking for the demon's name comes from the Bible, where Jesus asked the name of the Gerasene demoniac (Mark
5:9).
Early exorcists considered it worthy and codified it in the old 1614
Roman Ritual
, which allows the exorcist to ask “the number and name of the spirits inhabiting the person, the time when they entered into him and the cause.”

“One of the first things that he struggles to avoid is to confess his name, because to do so is some sort of half defeat for him,” says Father Amorth.

A demon's name delineates the type of spirit it may be. Sometimes the names are purely functional, such as “anger” or “lust;” at other times they are recognizable names from the Bible, like Beelzebub or Asmodeus.

Even exorcists admit that there is a lot of mystery to it. For instance, if the demon Asmodeus is present in two or more people that an exorcist sees (actually, it's more than that), why doesn't the demon recognize the exorcist? Shouldn't he be able to say to the exorcist, “Hi, remember me? We met this morning.” In actuality, sometimes it does happen that an exorcist will pray over a person, even in another part of the world, and have the demon say, “We fought each other five years ago in Jerusalem”—referring to an exorcism that the victim knows nothing about. However, this is rare, and the average exorcist (especially in Italy) may see Asmodeus three times in the same week without so much as a “Here we go again!” But according to one Italian exorcist, the actual name isn't that important. It may signify “the army” of that particular evil spirit. In other words, a demon saying “Asmodeus” is like a World War II American G.I. saying “I'm a Marine” or “I'm under Eisenhower.” “All that matters is that they give you a name, any name, so long as they respond to it,” says the exorcist.

For this reason, many exorcists actually prefer not to talk to the demon at all. Father Dermine, for example, doesn't even ask for the name. “I don't ask anything because I don't believe them. I know this may sound disappointing, but demons are such big liars that I just continue with the prayer almost as if they weren't there.”

It can also happen that a demon will sometimes give a person's name, such as “Adam.” A great debate exists among exorcists about whether or not the soul of a deceased person can cause a possession. The more theologically inclined exorcists say no (when a person dies, the soul goes straight to heaven, hell, or purgatory), while those who have spent some time in places like Africa (where the belief is widespread) say yes, it is possible. Father Nanni once prayed over a person who claimed to be the soul of a dead Mafia boss. After months of refusing to give any other name, Father Nanni did a little checking and discovered that the person in question never existed. On this occasion, the demon finally relented and confessed that he'd been trying to fool the exorcist all along.

In addition to the moments when Father Carmine was able to answer a few of their questions, Father Gary and Father Vince made it a habit to have a coffee or try to grab a bite afterward. Through Father Gary's knowledge of the personal histories of the victims and Father Vince's understanding of Italian (since he was fluent in Spanish, he could make out more Italian than Father Gary could), the two would compare notes. During one of their late-night repasts, Father Gary explained to Father Vince something that had taken him weeks to figure out—why Father Carmine touched people on certain parts of their body with the crucifix. He was searching for the points that had been “hit” by a curse. “People will often be dedicated in certain rituals and cursed objects will be placed on the back of their neck.”

They also discussed actions they felt wouldn't fly in the States, like Father Carmine slapping people at the end of the exorcism. They talked at length about the fact that the majority of bishops in America knew little about the reality of exorcism. Both agreed that bishops needed to be better informed.

A
S HE CONTINUED TO PARTICIPATE IN EXORCISMS
, Father Gary came to realize that while they could be grueling affairs, perhaps the most arduous aspect was the endless repetition. Father Carmine ran San Lorenzo as though it were an outpatient clinic. He would pray over people for fifteen to twenty minutes, and then, after scheduling a follow-up appointment, they would go about their day. From talking to Father Daniel, he knew that many of the other exorcists in Rome had similar approaches.

Later, Father Gary would discover that each exorcist has his own system, in part because almost all had other duties to perform besides being an exorcist. Father Carmine, for example, was the superior at San Lorenzo and was busy with running the day-to-day operations of the basilica and parish, which meant he could schedule people only three to four days a week, usually in the evenings. So Father Carmine tended to lump the more severe cases on certain days and see fewer of them, perhaps five rather than ten. However, people also showed up unannounced looking for a quick blessing. One day a trash collector parked her miniature sanitation truck outside in the courtyard, stomped in wearing her bright green reflective striped uniform, and asked the assembled throng whether Father Carmine was taking walk-in visits. As it turned out, he was not.

Then Father Gary considered the more entrenched cases, such as Sister Janica. The second time he had seen her, she seemed worse than before. On top of that, he reminded himself that she'd been coming to Father Carmine for nine years. Didn't the prayers of exorcism work?

People, Father Gary realized, are under a huge misapprehension that exorcism is a one-shot deal; that once an exorcist begins the
Ritual
, it is a fight to the finish that can last for days on end—until only one is left standing. An American exorcist in Scranton, Pennsylvania, coined the phrase “drive-through exorcisms” to describe this won-and-done approach that the media and Hollywood films have made popular. Not surprisingly, this misconception is held by many who visit exorcists, most of whom go looking for a quick fix.

“People don't understand what we do,” says Father Gramolazzo. “People come to see us expecting to be healed right away. They think, ‘I have a headache because of the demon,’ ‘My job isn't going well because of the demon.’ People are not properly informed.”

Instead, as Father Gramolazzo explains, exorcism is more akin to a journey, with the exorcist acting as a kind of “spiritual director” helping the victim to “rediscover the grace of God” through prayer and the sacraments. This is one of the reasons why exorcists believe God allows people to become possessed in the first place. “This message is extremely important,” insists Father Gramolazzo. “This is why it takes so long for people to become liberated. It is a journey of faith for the person, the family, and for the parish.”