Exorcism

A sixteen-year-old girl sits in a chair in a Russian Orthodox Church. She is being held down by her mother. Light filters in from high windows and the air is thick with tension and the smell of holy incense.A priest stands over her reading the rite of exorcism. The girl squirms in her mother’s arms, groaning and growling as if the priest’s words were a torment to her mind and soul. The girl struggles violently, her groans becoming inhuman howls and deep, guttural moans of psychological pain. Then she lashes out at the priest, and in a voice that seems not to be her own, spits words of defiance.This is not a scene from a Hollywood production. This is apartial description of an actual exorcism that took place in a Russian parish on May 1, 2004.

You can hear an actual recorded excerpt from this exorcism here (Windows MediaPlayer required). (WARNING: Do not listen if you are easily upset or disturbed by such things. Although there is no foul language, in English anyway, the sounds may be disturbing to some.) This recording was made by Eugene Safronov, who is an assistant to one of the exorcists in the Russian Orthodox Church. Although he did not assist in this particular case, he was a witness, and has assisted another priest in many other instances.Exorcisms on the RiseThe ideas of demonic possession andexorcism seem archaic and a peculiar anachronism in the high-tech, scientifically enlightened world of the 21st century. Most rational people regard the notion of demons as superstition. People who in the Middle Ages were thought to be possessed by demons and other evil spirits are now usually considered to be suffering from such brain disorders as Tourette Syndrome, schizophrenia, epilepsy or any number of psychiatric problems. At best, they are people with overactive imaginations under the negative influence of the occult and related media.Yet the battle between the possessed and the exorcists continues today, with a growing number of people believing that it is all too real:In February, 2005, about 100 Catholic priests signed up for a Vatican-sanctioned course on exorcism.......

Three believers sit around a table in the prayer room at Salt Lake Christian Fellowship, casually chatting before the "deliverance."There's Mary, the one with the demons; Sharon Seevinck, a full-time exorcist; and John Sooklaris, who, they say, has a gift for seeing.They are all middle-aged and remarkably ordinary. No white collars in sight. Mary (not her real name) had a great-grandmother, two grandmothers and mother with mental illness, as well as a brother who killed himself, she says, and she suffered from schizophrenia and a bipolar disorder for 20 years before being healed by prayer sometime last yearGod banished the voices in her head, hallucinations, and her emphysema but she still battles depression, anxiety about witchcraft and thoughts of suicide.

She wants these demons gone, too.Sooklaris says he sees a white sign over Mary's head that reads, "witch" so they begin there. Mary bows her head and closes her eyes."I command the spirit of witchcraft to go, you go, you go from here. I cancel the spells, go, go in Jesus' name. I speak to the generational witchcraft, you go, you go. Go in the name of Jesus Christ, you leave. Be gone. We sever any ties to witchcraft and we say to this spirit of witchcraft you get out of her," Seevinck says quietly over and over. At times, she places her hand above Mary's heart, on her arm, her forehead. She anoints Mary's head or ears with oil.Periodically, sheexchanges glances with Sooklaris, eager to determine if he has seen the demons leave. He shakes his head. Not yet."I see a black lace veil over her face," he says, then gets up and makes gestures as if he is removing it.They continue to badger and belittle Mary's demons. First, witchcraft, then suicidal thoughts, worry and finally, paranoia. They lean closer to her, focusing their intense prayers."You go, your powers are canceled, you come out of her, your assignment is over," repeats Seevinck in her calm, steady voice. Sooklaris is more impatient and insistent."You loose this precious child," he says. "You go Ð out her throat." Mary's head rolls back and then forward. Sometimes her eyes are open as she stares straight ahead ordown.......

His name is theatrical, he has a huge crucifix and he has said that Harry Potter is an incarnation of the Antichrist. Welcome to the world of Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s top exorcist and to millions of Catholics a big gun in the battle with the dark side: he is the author of An Exorcist Tells His Story (translated into 14 languages), the subject of numerous national television interviews and a powerful voice in a world where sin is in and ‘miracles’ get television coverage. “I am very busy,” he tells me on the phone. “I have six exorcisms to do this afternoon. I am afraid to report that occultism, Satanism and black magic are becoming very popular here,”he says, and adds enigmatically, “the forces are on the march.” I almost laugh, but Amorth has a point.

These days, Italians are indeed refreshing their historic affair with mysticism. There is Padre Pio, a not–long–gone Catholic guru whose lurid claims to sainthood now harness a seven–million strong pilgrimage to his tomb every year (the shrine even has a dedicated TV programme). And last year, Italians spent over 450m euros on fortune tellers, faith–healers, holy men and joss–stick burners of every flavour. Oh, and then there are the exorcists. Currently waving crosses and sprinkling holy water in every diocese of the country (exorcists get their licences to practice from bishops), their number has grown from 20 to over 300 in just ten years. Itis tempting to assign Amorth to the same kitsch landscape as Padre Pio and the numerous mystics that populate the peninsula. He most recently labelled young girls’ dolls as ‘Satanic’ and is well known for carrying out telephone exorcisms on distressed housewives (most of his clients are women). Still, there is considerably more to Amorth than meets the sceptical eye. His background is impressive: a former partisan commander trained in law, brother of a judge, and son of lawyers, he is also a professional journalist (he has been a regular contributor to the weekly magazine Famiglia Cristiana and is an associate editor of the monthly Madre di Dio). And now, at 80 years old, he is easily the most respected exorcist in Italy. A priest for 50 years andan. ...

By Eric T. Hansen Special to The Washington Post

BERLIN -- The first person to recognize that Anneliese Michel was possessed by demons was an older woman accompanying the girl on a pilgrimage. She noticed that Anneliese would not walk past a certain image of Jesus, refused to drink water from a holy spring and smelled bad -- hellishly bad. An exorcist in a nearby town examined Michel and returned a diagnosis of demonic possession. The bishop issued permission to perform the rite of exorcism according to the Roman ritual of 1614.Half a year and 67 rites of exorcism later, Michel was dead at 23.Anneliese Michel did not die in the Middle Ages, but in 1976, in the small town of Klingenberg, in the heart of one of the most civilized and advanced countries in Europe: Germany.  Though set in America in the present, "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," which stars Tom Wilkinson as the priest who performed the exorcism and Laura Linney as his defense lawyer, is based on Michel's story and focuses not on the sensational exorcism itself but on the court case that followed.

Two years after Michel's death, a German court found her parents and the two priests involved guilty of negligent manslaughter and sentenced them to six months in prison, suspended with three years' probation. What shocked Germany most was the fact that it could happen in a country that prides itself on being highly rational -- and highly secularized. "The surprising thing was that the people connected to Michel were all completely convinced that she had really been possessed," says Franz Barthel, amazement still in his voice three decades after he covered the story for the regional daily paper Main-Post."Many years later, I visited the woman who first diagnosed the Devil," Barthel says. "She blessed my microphone with holy water because I was working for the radio then, and it was likely that the Devil was in control of the microphone." Michel was raised in a strict Catholic family in Bavaria, which rejected the reforms of Vatican II and flirted with religious fringe groups. While other kids her age were rebelling against authority and experimenting with sex, she tried to atone for the sins of wayward priests and drug addicts by sleeping on a bare floor in the middle of winter.According to court findings, she experienced her first epileptic attack in 1969, and by 1973 was suffering from depression and considering suicide. Soon she was seeing the faces of demons on the people and things around her, and voices told her she was damned....