THE NEW EXORCISTS

Exorcism is on the rise, and not just on the religious fringe. Psychiatry remains sceptical, but priests are flocking to upskill in the Catholic Church’s 370-year-old ritual, and the Pope himself has declared that “the battle against evil is an emergency”.

- WILLIAM LANGLEY

The evening shadows are creeping over the colonnades and piazzas of Rome as an elderly, white-haired priest leaves the comforts of his home and heads through the streets towards a room in an apartment block where others are waiting.

He walks slowly, carrying a small, black case filled with the essential paraphernalia of the ritual he is about to perform.

The room has been prepared to his precise instructions – cleaned, sprinkled with holy water, and stripped of moveable objects. Of those now gathered inside it, only the priest – his face drawn and solemn – has any idea of what to expect.

Or rather, who to expect.

The night ahead is likely to be long and exhausting, but time has taught the priest to recognise the natures of the demons he pursues. They may be ingenious or stupid, coarse or charming, brazen or craven. Hell, it seems, is no place for stereotypes.

“Exorcizo te,” he begins, using the Latin phrase for “I command you,” which opens the 370-year-old Catholic ritual for casting out devils. Then, as prayers are said around him, he touches the possessed’s forehead with the hem of his cassock and orders the demon to reveal itself.

It’s tempting to assume that this sort of gothic tableau belongs in history books or Hollywood horror films, but far from slipping into obsolescence, the demand for exorcism is growing rapidly in the modern world, and the Vatican is currently training hundreds of new priests to cope with it.