If You Liked The Movie...

The story hangs on the testimony of an interested party. But according to Father Gabriele Amorth, exorcist for the Diocese of Rome, the heir to the throne of St. Peter recently spent half an hour struggling--literally--with a demon from hell. Pope John Paul II was conducting his regular Wednesday audience on Sept. 6 when there was reportedly a disturbance in the front row. A 19-year-old woman began screaming insults in what Italian newspapers called "a cavernous voice." Struggling with guards, she displayed "a superhuman strength." The frail Pontiff did not hesitate. After the apparent demoniac was hurried to a secluded area, he prayed over her, hugged her and promised to celebrate a Mass for her the next day.

The possessed woman is one of Amorth's tougher patients (he says he didn't witness the incident but was told about it later); and the Pope, he claims, had no better luck in dislodging the demon. After the Pontiff left, a voice was heard to speak through her: "Not even [the] head [of the church] can send me away." Odd as the story may sound, it is the third reported instance of John Paul's attempting to cast out a demon (the others took place in 1978 and 1982). At a time when official exorcists are being added by several American dioceses, it suggests a remarkable comeback for an all-but-abandoned church rite. As if to illustrate the trend, the 1973 film The Exorcist has just been rereleased in theaters.

Most religions acknowledge that humans can be possessed by what exorcism chronicler Malachi Martin called "personal and intelligent evil," and most prescribe measures to win back the victim. Jesus cast out demons on six occasions; a transdenominational echo of the rite is found in Christian godparents' promise that their godchild will renounce the devil and all his works and ways. For centuries every Roman Catholic priest's ordination included an explicit induction into the Order of the Exorcist.

In 1972, however, that order (although not the job) was eliminated. A century of Freudian psychology and medical progress was harsh on exorcism. Conditions previously thought diabolical, such as Tourette's syndrome, proved medically treatable. In the wake of Vatican II, many American Catholics "wanted to restrict things to only a scientific way of knowing" and shied away from the rite's supernatural literalism, says the Rev. Kazimierz Kowalski, an exorcist in Manhattan. Notes the Rev. James LeBar, who took up the work in 1989: "The whole thing kind of went down to embers."

But there are sparks of life once again. In 1991 LeBar and some underemployed colleagues performed a television exorcism on ABC's 20/20. So many viewers called in to request similar aid that the late John Cardinal O'Connor of New York appointed four archdiocesan exorcists. In an average year, they investigate some 350 cases and perform 10 to 15 exorcisms. Last year Chicago's Francis Cardinal George appointed the first official exorcist in his diocese's 160-year history. Several months earlier, the Vatican had revised the Rite of Exorcism. It eliminated physical descriptions of Satan and such honorifics as the "Father of Lies," but it also vigorously affirmed the church's power to banish him using God's name, holy water, the sign of the cross and readings from Scripture. An exorcists' convention in Rome in July attracted 230 participants; LeBar says at least 18 specifically delegated priests now work in the U.S.

Most do other work as well. LeBar is chaplain at a psychiatric hospital and is well aware of the danger of mistaking psychological symptoms for spiritual ones. He calls in a psychiatrist and medical doctor before any exorcism, but, he notes, "there comes a point, when somebody is climbing up the wall or floating on the ceiling or talking a language they've never studied, when it's harder to put it in the 'psychological-problem' bin." The highest levitation he has witnessed, he says, was of a woman who "rose up above pew level and stayed there a little bit and went back down." Some cases of possession, he says, can take decades to resolve.

Many exorcists think their job prospects are looking up because the need has grown. The culture's lack of a moral anchor, its acceptance of abortion and an increased flirtation with paganism, says Kowalski, can lead the susceptible to "put themselves proximate to darkness." Many exorcists praise The Exorcist for its realism. Kowalski, for one, is looking forward to seeing the movie, which has been re-edited to add 11 min. of footage. "How could I not go," he asks, "and root for the home team?"