I Watch Films: The Pope's Exorcist
It’s the 1980s and Father Gabriele Amorthe (Russel Crowe, the character being based on a real person, the film on his books) encounters someone who appears to be possessed by a demon in a village in Italy. He taunts the demon, tricks it into possessing a pig, and then has the pig shot.
Back in the Vatican a panel of church authorities question and chastise him; one is opposed to his role, another a supporter. They accuse him of performing an exorcism without permission from the bishop; he claims it was just a bit of psychological theatre for a mentally ill person. He explains to them that he is the Pope’s Exorcist, and only takes orders from him. The Pope then gives him some orders.
Julia Vasquez has inherited an abbey in Spain from her deceased husband’s family. She, her teenage daughter and younger son Henry have gone there to oversee renovations so they can sell it. Henry was in the car accident that killed his father and has not spoken since.
The workmen find weird stuff under the Abbey and Henry starts talking, but with the voice of a demon. The local priest, come to see what’s going on with the Abbey, thinks he might be possessed. The archivists reckon there’s something odd with the Abbey so the Pope dispatches Amorthe, his personal exorcist. Amorth arrives on his scooter* and his case of various holy things. He’s done lots of exorcisms, takes it relatively lightly. When he asks the local priest how long it’s been since his last confession and learns it’s nine months he doesn’t bother to listen to them, just asks if he's going to try and do better and absolves him.
This is a mistake. It’s no common or garden demon. They discover secrets hidden by the church, buried sins. They confess properly this time. Amorthe was a partisan in WW2, vowed to serve God. Later he refused to help a woman as she was not possessed; she killed herself (possibly due to church-covered up abuse). His sin is Pride. Meanwhile the local priest has been fornicating, claiming he would leave the church and marry her. He did not intend to. His is Lust.
Based loosely on the real Amorthe’s memoirs, the details and church politics are good, for once the overt Catholicism of a demonic horror film being justified. If the scale of the creepy Abbey counts against it, seeming too much like a set, it then again makes itself allowable by the point of the film being: the church has secrets, evil, that might destroy it unless let into the light.
Watch This: Demonic possession film firmly anchored in
Catholic practice and orthodoxy
Don’t Watch This: Hinting at abuse within the church while
blaming demons for widespread persecution is cowardly
* Does he ride his scooter from Rome to Spain? Or is most of it on a ferry, or does he have it air-freighted? It’s the same scooter as far as I can tell. Was this careless, or did the real Amorthe ride his scooter all around Europe (the world?).
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