When Oscar-winning Gladiator actor Russell Crowe was handed a script about an Italian priest who was the Vatican’s chief exorcist for three decades, he wasn’t that excited.
It was only when he started doing his own research into Father Gabriele Amorth – “the person” – and the centuries-old tradition of exorcism rituals hidden behind the walls of the Vatican, that he was converted.
“I spent time in Rome, met friends of his, met brothers from the same Order … people who had performed exorcisms with him [including] one guy who had done 160 with him … I started to get welded on to the man,” Crowe tells ABC’s 7.30.
Based on the books, An Exorcist Tells His Story, and An Exorcist: More Stories, by Father Amorth, The Pope’s Exorcist is the historical story of the priest’s encounters with children and adults who believed they were possessed by the devil.
A controversial man of the cloth who famously started his exorcisms by thumbing his nose at the devil, Father Amorth’s case files detailed more than 100,000 rituals during his lifetime.
Born in Modena in 1921, Father Amorth had a calling for the priesthood at a young age, but was turned away, joining Italy’s resistance fighters, the “partigiani”, during World War II. They opposed the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.
According to the Catholic News Agency, it was not until 1986 that Cardinal Ugo Poletti, the vicar general of the Diocese of Rome, appointed him as an exorcist.
He spent the next 30 years on the job, dying at the age of 91 in 2016.
Crowe was attracted to Father Amorth’s “purity of his faith and his sense of humour”.
“Those two things … I was just very attracted to that, you know, because … it’s such a serious gig. But at the same time, he was so goofy. I really liked that combination,” Crowe said.
Father Amorth rode a scooter in Rome – as did Crowe throughout filming – disliked the boy wizard Harry Potter, and he thought yoga was the work of the devil.
“You’ve got to also understand the cheekiness of his humour … what he actually said was, ‘You should be careful of yoga because if you practise yoga it requires you to put yourself at the centre of the universe and this is a position that should be occupied by God.
“So just call it stretching.
“I mean, that’s some funny s—,” Crowe recounts, laughing.
The devil? Fact or fiction?
Director William Friedkin most famously depicted the devil in the 1973 movie The Exorcist, scaring audiences to the extent it caused “fainting, vomiting and heart attacks in cinemas”.
Watching a young actress Linda Blair (Regan), 12, rotating her head 360 degrees, projectile vomiting, levitating and speaking in a deep voice to Father Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow), was terrifying.
Throwing holy water onto her and saying “the power of God compels you” to the devil inside was unforgettable.
Crowe agrees.
“I saw it in 1978. I was 14. It scared the living daylights out of me,” he said.
In The Pope’s Exorcist, Crowe portrays Father Amorth in similar circumstances (who, by the way, apparently liked the original film), including speaking to the devil through a young possessed boy in a bedroom somewhere.
The story is part horror, part history, part dramatisation, and follows Father Amorth’s investigation into a centuries-old conspiracy, performing just two exorcisms on screen.
“Let’s talk about this existence of the devil. Is the devil an individual, you know, the same way that some people would like, you know, God to be sitting on a white cloud with a long flowing beard?” Crowe asked.
“Or is it something else, you know, because I don’t think there’s anybody that would say that evil doesn’t exist in our lives?
“Some would say, you know, that the great secrets of world history reside inside the libraries in the Vatican.
“And I think whenever you have an organisation like that, that requires so many layers of security and secrecy, that people will ask questions. That’s just a natural thing.”
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Are exorcisms still performed?
Yes.
Father Amorth was a pioneer in the dark art of getting rid of demons, and believed there was a growing need for exorcists in a world that lacked faith in God.
There’s a week-long course on the ministry of exorcism and prayers of liberation for exorcists and those who assist them, put on by the Sacerdos Institute and the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, a Catholic university run by the Legionaries of Christ.
The 17th annual exorcism course runs from May 8 to 13 this year.
Last year’s course in Rome attracted about 120 people from countries outside Italy, including the United States, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Spain and Nigeria, according to Catholic World Report.
“While only a priest can perform the rite of exorcism, laypeople often assist at the rite with prayers,” it wrote.
“When someone is believed to be having trouble with demonic oppression or possession, psychologists or other medical professionals may also be called in to perform examinations, to rule out natural causes for disturbances.”
Crowe says Father Amorth approached his job with a degree of scepticism, and he turned away 98 per cent of the people who came looking for an exorcism.
“He’s dealing with the afflicted all the time. He’s dealing with the individuals and their families who are going through the darkest moments of their lives and bringing them hopefully to some kind of relief, some kind of light,” Crowe said.
“It is very important to point out that he was very attuned to the fact that you could be suffering very deeply from a medical condition, or a psychological condition, and which had nothing to do with the core of his job.”
Which was, getting rid of the devil inside.
The Pope’s Exorcist premieres in cinemas nationally on April 6
