The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist (22 page)

I
N
2003, Beatrice, a forty-six-year-old married woman who worked as a biologist in a medical lab, began experiencing odd phenomena— freak accidents, objects moving around the house on their own, a mysterious force that pushed her mother to the ground, breaking her arm. A year later, burn marks began appearing on all her clothing, always in the same place—on the thigh—and always the same size. Thinking she was losing her mind, she eventually found her way to Father Bamonte, who discerned the presence of three demons. After a grueling two-year battle involving weekly exorcisms, Beatrice was finally freed.

The first of December, 2006, a day which seemed like any other, was the day in which God permitted my liberation. To tell you the truth, my mood had been pretty down for a few days because, after a period of relative calm on the part of “that one” [the demon], I went back to the old times, when I used to scream, to be agitated and to attack everybody either verbally or physically. While in the past I was usually conscious, feeling as if I was split between the sensations of my own life and those from the demon (to the point of even fearing that I was hallucinating, or that those were just the manifestation of my psychosis), in the last couple months I entered in a deep state of trance. I could only feel rage and the other atrocious sensations of that monster which manifested; and at the end, I could remember only a few things, almost nothing.

This new situation unfortunately made me think that things, for some mysterious reason, were getting worse. As a matter of fact, even if I continued to trust in God's divine mercy and in the protection of the Blessed Mother, these strong reactions made me think that the demon had somehow regained some strength and that, as a result, the day of my liberation was still very far off. In spite of that, every day I kept giving my life to the Lord and to the Immaculate Virgin.

In the previous session, I had a huge amount of saliva coming out of my mouth, as if I was “expelling out” all the evil that I still had inside, but in the end “that one” seemed to still be there. The day he left, though, was a special day: It was the Friday after the feast of Christ the King, two days after it would have been the first Sunday of Advent and in one week the Feast of the Immaculate Conception would have started (actually my husband and I had already started reciting the novena for two days). It was basically a marvelous coincidence of sacred events. The exorcism started as usual with the prayers following the formula of the rite; the only difference that manifested after a while was a strong reaction by the demon to the words “For Christ, with Christ and in Christ.” It seemed as if he had never heard them before. He started to become very agitated, he
lost all his usual arrogance and became desperate. He tried to bite the hands of the people who were trying to hold him or to throw away the crucifix that the exorcist had put on my chest and also (with my great sorrow) to spit on it. All of a sudden (I don't remember the sequence of the events; maybe it was when the exorcist invoked Mary), I felt hit by a huge wave of a very bright white light
—
it was all encompassing, a light that I could perceive and feel as well, and it gave me a sensation of very sweet peace while for the demon it provoked atrocious pain.

Once again I felt like I was splitting, dividing between my own sensations and “his.” If I closed my eyes I could see in my mind's eye that we were in a deep shadow and so I knew that the light that was embracing me was a spiritual one. Closing my eyes again, I could abo perceive that this same light was stabbing the eyes of the monster like a thousand swords. Meanwhile the monster was screaming, moving like crazy, saying that the veil of Mary (whom he referred to as “that one”) was suffocating him and causing him a huge amount of pain, to the point of causing him to go into terrible, indescribable spasms. Toward the end he launched a scream as he never did before and I felt rent in two, as if somebody turned me inside out.

Then all of a sudden there was calm and silence and I opened my eyes, coming out of the trance by myself. Then Father Francesco [Bamonte] blessed me, ending the rite. I had no idea that something out of the ordinary had happened. In fact, as I said, the three days leading up to the exorcism were terrible for me, and all through that time I had felt a growing rage and a huge sense of mental confusion mixed with a lack of hope. I was familiar with all those kinds of emotions, but I never felt them in such an intensive way. It seemed as if my life was about to end. After the exorcism, I started to feel a little better again, and from that moment I started to improve more and more.

During the exorcism two Fridays later I remained conscious; and even though I closed my eyes, when Father Francesco checked them in order to see how my pupils looked, they stayed in the normal position. From the very beginning of the rite, my mind started to form thoughts in which I denied with all my will any kind of “cooperation” with the demon, I told “him” that with the help and the strength of God, I would never allow him any kind of power over me, something I had never been able to do before.

When the rite was nearing completion, Father Francesco suggested to his helpers that they open the Bible and read a passage. One of them opened the Bible at random and they read a passage from the Gospel of Luke in which Jesus reads in the synagogue of Nazareth. “When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free” (Luke 4:16-18). That passage of the Gospel was the marvelous confirmation of what had just happened: the Lord liberated me! While I was crying tears of joy, I started to thank the Lord and the Immaculate Virgin, which I will continue to do for as long as I live.

F
OR MANY YEARS
, the scientific and medical community scorned the idea that a person could be “healed” through prayers or ritualistic ceremonies like exorcism. Today, however, the ability of certain healing rituals to offer genuine relief is no longer disputed—numerous anthropologists have documented that people have recovered from problems varying from depression, addictive behavior, or anxiety to even more severe ailments, including life-threatening diseases, through such ceremonies. So how does science account for “anomalous healing”?

At the core of these experiences lies the difference between “healing” and “curing.” According to Stanley Krippner and Jeanne Achter-berg in the book
Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the
Scientific Evidence
, for many indigenous people “healing” means restoring a person's physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual capacities, while “curing” usually refers to overcoming a disease that is primarily biological in nature.

Scientists and doctors have tried a variety of methods in an attempt to explain how anomalous healing experiences may actually work. In looking at spirit possession in Haiti, for example, scholar Steve Mizrach came to the conclusion that voodoo possession can be considered a kind of psychotherapy or “folk therapy.” In addition, I. M. Lewis, author of
Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession
, surmised that the “psychologically highly charged atmosphere” of a séance could be effective in treating certain neurotic or psychosomatic disturbances, adding that even in the case of organic illnesses, he thought it might also provide a benefit simply by strengthening the patient's will to recover.

More than a few cognitive scientists have pointed out the potential benefits of an exorcism in treating people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Dr. Mazzoni, for example, believes the exorcist gives some people a way out by saying that their problems are caused by an outside entity and therefore they are not the cause, which, she says, “allows the patient to make a clean break … People get cured of demonic possession because basically the priest becomes the therapist and the priest is the one who is able to take control of the bad part of the person.”

In comparing exorcism with the “traditional” approach to treating DID, Dr. Steven Jay Lynn notes that the former may actually be more beneficial. “In a way the exorcist's ritual is a lot clearer, because if the therapist believes that the person cannot be cured until they know all about the underlying personality system, and recover all the memories and have succeeded in integrating all the personalities— the person or patient can go through a tremendous amount of emotional pain in trying to recover memories, especially if they're not real memories. Now, an exorcism is a pretty clear-cut procedure that doesn't really depend on this extensive background of work with the person, so I would think that it may in fact be much more effective in helping people ‘get better,’ quote-unquote.”

Dr. Richard Gallagher, however, says that that's not really the purpose of the
Ritual.
“I wouldn't do it for mental health purposes,” he says. “If you are dealing with a suggestive individual or an individual who is deluded into thinking they are being attacked by the demonic I personally think that an exorcism is a bad idea. I am sure that there are some people who argue that an exorcism can be psychologically therapeutic, but again that is not the primary reason that it is being done. It's being done because [the exorcist] thinks there is a genuine demonic entity involved and they need spiritual help.”

Interestingly, neuroscience is also beginning to weigh in on this subject as well. Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California Los Angeles, has discovered a way to treat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) that sounds very similar to how exorcism is practiced in certain circles. In looking at the disorder, Dr. Schwartz saw how the plasticity of the brain actually made people's compulsions stronger if they gave in to them, since the neural pathways increased in number when used. Because Dr. Schwartz believes that the brain has the capacity to rewire itself if given the correct set of instructions, he created a four-step program that he said could address the problem naturally. Similar to a religious person giving a demonic name to the compulsion, the first step in Dr. Schwartz's program teaches the patient to say that the problem is the result of the OCD and not the patient herself. According to Dr. Schwartz, reattributing is a particularly effective technique in helping the patient to redirect her attention away from the demoralizing effects of engaging in compulsive behaviors.

These healing rituals may also work because of the placebo effect. Psychologist Dr. Michael E. Hyland, from the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom, has done extensive research into placebos, which he prefers to call “therapeutic rituals.” “I don't like the word
placebo
because, one, it implies that we know what the cause of it is, and the other is that we know the mechanism, and we don't.” He first became interested in placebos as a way to “personalize” therapy. “It doesn't really matter what the therapy is, therapies work, that is the one thing you can be sure of,” he says. “Now, the question is, why do they work? That is a much more controversial issue.”

According to Dr. Hyland, the conventional wisdom on placebo says that it works because of expectancy, but he thinks there might be other mechanisms involved. “It isn't just the expectation that you are going to get better or be healed; there is actually a far more complex process.”

Dr. Hyland has come up with something he calls motivational concordance. “Our research suggests that two mechanisms are involved. One is the well-established mechanism of response expectancy. The other is a motivational mechanism where people gain therapeutic benefit by engaging in therapeutic rituals that are concordant with self-defining or self-actualizing goals. That is, when people self-actualize as part of therapy, then this produces therapeutic benefit through a motivational, non-expectancy-dedicated pathway.” Put differently, when a person feels as if his needs are being met through therapy, then this can help him to get better by motivating him to get really engaged with the therapy.

Most important, Dr. Hyland's research showed that it doesn't necessarily matter if the person undergoing the ritual believes in it; what really matters is how it “feels” to them. “The ritual is basically concordant with your motivations. So, for example, if we look at prayer as a therapeutic ritual and people know about it, we see those psychological mediated effects, some of which might be expectancy.” In other words, spiritual rituals tend to work for spiritual people.