TURIN. Is it really necessary to proclaim the supernatural nature of evil? Is it not enough for man, and also for the Christian, to know that evil is evil by definition without the need for demons, satanassi and other monsters of the afterlife ready to take advantage of our errors? Questions that inevitably dot the biography of an exorcist and still run through discussion in the Catholic Church today. The starting point for a reflection comes from the beautiful book by Domenico Agasso, Vaticanist of the Press, and profound connoisseur of the events of the Italian Church. It is the story of the life of Don Gabriele Amorth, who passed away 5 years ago and for three decades dean of Italian exorcists.
The human story of Amorth is that of a young Emilian trained in the post-war Christian Democrat anti-fascism, soon forced to choose between God and Mammon, between the religious vocation and the lure of political power. Don Amorth decides to consecrate himself as a priest but does not forget politics and becomes one of the organizers of the Marian pilgrimage to dedicate Italy to the Madonna, a great media operation (we would say today) to counter the preaching of the PCI in the peninsula. The expression “pilgrim Madonna” is still used today to refer to someone who is carried in triumph for propaganda purposes.
Not everyone in the Catholic Church appreciated what they considered “a form of devotion”, the statues of the Madonna being carried around Italy by helicopter and defending it from communism. In reality it was essentially a propaganda operation to tie politics and religion, Church and State as it is today, in an even closer way, to remain with Christianity, it happens in the Orthodox world. The prime minister of the time (Antonio Segni) took part in the ceremonies and the President of the Republic Gronchi sent a message. But it was above all a great communication move in the years when TV was just born. Amorth had learned from his direct superior and friend Don Giacomo Alberione, founder of the Pauline editions. It had been years, the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties, in which the idea of a mystery religion, closed in on itself and in its rituals, was beginning to show its cracks. It would take the Second Vatican Council to turn their backs on the priests in the mass, to push them to look at their people and speak to them in their language, abandoning Latin. For this reason the marriage between religion and communication, a sacrament almost non-existent until the 1950s, was the keystone of a new Christianity that would arrive in the second half of the 1960s.
With this biography behind him, the leap that Don Amorth makes in the mid-eighties, now sixty, is astonishing. From the madonnas exhibited in a helicopter to the dim light of the sacristies where the Devil is chased away, the road is very long, almost a pain in retaliation. It is said that he performed tens of thousands of exorcisms, certainly becoming the dean of Italian priests dedicated to the mission. Not always, the Church warns, are cases of demonic possession. And it is certainly striking that almost half of the exorcists are in Italy, as if the Devil had a predilection for the Peninsula. But it is not the number of demons cast out that matters.
“Find me only one righteous and I will spare the city” God says to Abraham. Similarly, but on the opposite side, only one case of diabolical possession is enough to be able to declare that Evil has a supernatural prince, just like Good. So that the first ends up in spite of himself to make the second necessary, to make indirect propaganda for him. Thus exorcism becomes one of the proofs of the presence of the supernatural, one of the most powerful tools to communicate the existence of God. For the Pauline don Gabriele Amorth the rite of exorcism is an instrument for the propagation of faith in the same way as the pilgrimage of the Madonna in postwar Italy. In his book Agasso reports the testimonies of those who met Don Gabriele, “a humble priest”, they say. So humble as to cast out demons, to order the devil “flee away”. A paradox, certainly, yet another in the life of the exorcist. For those who believe in it, of course.
Domenico Agasso
Father Amorth continues. The official biography
San Paolo Editions
pp- 240, € 18