The main Catholic exorcist, father Gabriel Amort, who died in 2016, said that he had met the devil 60 thousand times in 30 years. The book of his colleague Marcello Stantsione, “The Devil is Afraid of Me,” describes priestly exorcism sessions and signs of obsession, reports the Daily Mail.
The exorcist claimed that he once encountered Satan in the morning of 1997 – then a young Italian was brought to his office in Rome. Amort noted that the possessed knew only his native language, but the spirit inside him spoke excellent English. The priest began a session of exile and demanded that the devil give his name. “He was shocked when he was told that the spirit is Lucifer himself,” the newspaper writes. When the exorcist ordered Lucifer to leave the Italian, the body of the young man tensed, ascended over the floor for several minutes, and then collapsed into a chair. After this, Satan admitted defeat and named the exact day and time when he left, Amorth said.
Father Amort became a student of the exorcist in 1986, and already in 1990 founded the International Association of Exorcists. First, he conducted sessions in the temple of the Holy Stairs, then moved to the headquarters of his order. According to Stationion, Amorth was famous for his sense of humor. “Amorth’s favorite joke was this:
“ Do you know why the devil runs away when he sees me? Because I’m uglier than him, ”” the memoir says.
The exorcist admitted that many of the people who came to him for sessions had mental problems that the psychologist best coped with. At the same time, he called several “symptoms” of obsession – headaches, stomach cramps, which can easily be confused with a common disease. The priest said that the devil hates Latin and prefers to speak English, even if the obsessed person does not know the language.
According to Amorth, 90 percent of the obsessed are Satanists, or people addicted to witchcraft sessions. In addition, he noted that the devil is often infused in middle-aged women who have a weakness for fortune telling.
Sessions of the expulsion of the devil are in great demand in the Vatican. In February 2018, it was reported that because of this, a special course in exorcism was taught at the Pontifical University of Regina Apostolorum in Rome.
The Vatican approved exorcism in 2014. Then the Catholic Church officially recognized the existence of the International Association of Exorcists. The organization, led by Amort, who died in 2016, now has about 400 members, 240 of them from Italy.
