Satan's Worst Nightmare
Begone, Beelzebub!

International Herald Tribune, January 4, 2002


ROME - The Roman Catholic Church's best-known exorcist led the way
down a long hallway that was dark but not particularly spooky, dim in
a way that evoked only thrift, to the small office where he performs
his rite.

The Reverend Gabriele Amorth, who is an awfully jolly priest given
his specialty, did not even take Christmas off this year. These are
boom times for his opponent, after all, Amorth said. Exhibit A: the
world. He sees 10 people a day, give or take, for demonic
possessions, obsessions and lower-grade infestations.

In Italy, Amorth is a well-known author whose book "An Exorcist Tells
His Story" has been reprinted 17 times. He describes his life,
though, as a hard one, spent misunderstood and marginalized, although
never wholly disowned, by his own church, which these days mostly
seems embarrassed by the ancient rituals he has refused to update.

Lately Amorth, who is 75, has been in all the papers again, this time
for taking on Harry Potter. When he recently told ANSA, the Italian
news agency, that the devil was behind Harry, luring children into
supernatural adventures, he set off a debate in newspapers and
Catholic chat rooms on the Internet.

In truth, though, the exorcist himself does not seem all that
exercised by the young wizard from Hogwarts.

"If children can see the movie with their parents, it's not all bad,"
Amorth said in an interview, so mildly that it was impossible not to
wonder whether he was not a little bit grateful to Harry. Certainly
he is eager to get out the message that the evil Lord Voldemort of
the Potter stories is a softie compared with the real You-Know-Who.

"Wars are mostly caused by the devil; certainly Hitler was
consecrated to Satan, and Stalin," he said. "I prefer not to mention
living persons."

He has been known to, however. Just last summer he blamed the devil
for the temporary defection of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo of Zambia,
who was married, very briefly, to a follower of the Reverend Sun
Myung Moon in New York.

Amorth said the same of a teenage couple convicted of murdering the
young woman's mother and brother in Italy last winter. Later the
police did report that the two had been reading satanic books. He
doesn't seem to hold that against them, though.

Most of the people seeking his professional services are psychiatric
cases, he says.

"I won't see them until they've seen a doctor first," he said, "and
most come after they've seen many, many doctors."

Often he even teams up with psychiatrists, and in listening to him
talk it is remarkable how much he would seem to have in common with
these colleagues.

Those who complain that therapists let people with imperfect
childhoods off the hook for their own behavior, for instance, would
really hate Amorth's conviction that the possessed person "isn't a
bad person, only a suffering one."

Sometimes the person has been dabbling in magic, he said. But most of
the time "the problem is the result of a spell, and, in that event,
there can be no guilt," though a proper spell is rather hard to come
by "because most magicians are fakes and cheaters."

Some of his clients have been with him as long as Woody Allen's movie
persona has been on the couch. One has been coming for 16 years.
Amorth's goals, too, are health and honesty: "I never ask them to
become Catholic but to live an honest life."

His father and grandfather were lawyers. After fighting in the
Italian resistance as a teenager, he studied the law, too, and was
deputy to Giulio Andreotti in the Young Christian Democrats, long
before Andreotti became Italy's seven-time prime minister.

A PLAYFUL SPRITZ - Amorth's calling, though, was the church, and
later, at the request of his bishop, exorcism. In a drafty back
office of the Society of St. Paul, when asked how he works, he showed
the crucifix and baptismal oil he uses and playfully spritzed some
holy water around the room.

Of course his metier predates the New Testament, in which Jesus casts
out demons. In the autumn of 2000 the Vatican confirmed Amorth's
announcement that the pope, too, had said a prayer of exorcism over a
young woman who had begun screaming and writhing during his weekly
audience in St. Peter's Square.

Yet the Catholic Church is largely mum about the devil these days.
You hardly ever hear a thing about him, Amorth said. Meanwhile, he
added, the hierarchy is busy trying to tie the exorcist's hands with
modern new rules.

"I have bad relations with a number of different cardinals because
they have a total ignorance of these problems," he said, rolling his
eyes. Two years ago the church came out with an all-new rite that he
calls useless.

"We can't touch curses, we can't talk to the devil and we can do an
exorcism only when it's a sure possession, which, since the exorcism
itself is diagnostic, can't possibly work," he said. "An unnecessary
exorcism never hurt anybody."

For a real education, he suggested, the hierarchy might want to check
out the 1973 horror movie about his line of work. "I'm very grateful
to 'The Exorcist,'" he said, promoting that movie far more
energetically than he had bad-mouthed Harry Potter, "because they
made known what we do."

(from: http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/02/01/1bkkp/04b.html )