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Vatican's Chief Exorcist Says He's Dealt With Demons 60,000 Times

Vatican's Chief Exorcist Says He's Dealt With Demons 60,000 Times

He even came head to head with devil itself

Amelia Ward

Amelia Ward

Vatican exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth says he has dealt with 60,000 exorcisms - and on one occasion he came up against a demon who communicated in perfect English, even though the man afflicted spoke only Italian.

The Italian priest - the Vatican's chief exorcist, no less - is the subject of a new book which relates his spooky experiences, going into detail about some of his jobs as an exorcist.

Father Gabriele Amorth.
Shutterstock

One story in the new book is particularly scary. Father Amorth was visited by a young Italian man one morning in 1997, who was accompanied by a priest and a translator.

The man who visited him only spoke Italian - hence the translator - but the spirit inside him spoke perfect English.

When Father Amorth began the exorcism in Latin, he mentioned Jesus - and at that moment, the man turned to the priest and stared at him, before yelling curses and threats in English and spitting at him and trying to attack him.

However, the demon went silent for a second when the exorcist got to the prayer Praecipio tibi ('I command you').

Marcello ­Stanzione, a fellow Catholic priest who worked with Father Amorth, wrote: "But then, screaming and howling, the demon burst forth and looked straight at him, drooling saliva from the young man's mouth."

Father Amorth continued with the 'rite of liberation' and told the spirit to reveal its name, only for the demon to reply that it was Lucifer. As you might imagine, the priest was rocked upon realising he had been faced with the Devil, but he continued with his work.

The possessed man carried on shrieking and twisted his head back, his eyes rolling back in his head and his back arched. The room became so cold that ice crystals formed on the windows and walls.

A few minutes later, the young man's body stiffened and began levitating, hovering in the air before collapsing down onto a chair.

Warner Bros

Now, it may sound like a horror film, but Father Stanzione insists it all happened. His book, The Devil Is Afraid Of Me, contains all the deets about Father Amorth's life, including the particularly horrific encounter in 1997, as well as the astonishing 60,000 exorcisms he carried out in his 30 years on the job.

A few months before Father Amorth died in 2016, the director of the film The Exorcist, William Friedkin, was allowed to film him performing a real exorcism, making him the first person to do so.

The documentary footage shows an Italian woman in her late 30s thrashing violently, shouting in a voice that simply doesn't sound human. She had supposedly been cursed by her Satanist brother and his girlfriend.

Although Friedkin was agnostic, he said the experience was 'terrifying', with even top neurosurgeons and psychiatrists unable to explain the film.

Father Armorth warned: "The Devil is always hiding and the thing he wants above all is that we don't believe he exists."

Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock

Topics: Weird