00:00For the intercession of the Virgin Mary,
00:03may Satan annul you.
00:05No! No! No!
00:08Gabriele Amorth, you know, he did a job that I...
00:11When I first heard about it, I thought somebody had made it up.
00:13Exorcism is my job.
00:15But there actually is a job
00:19as the chief exorcist of the Vatican,
00:21and he did that job for 36 years.
00:24...and my son,
00:25I'm going to exorcise him.
00:27Satan!
00:29Who is going to exorcise him?
00:31The woman!
00:32No!
00:33The woman!
00:34I'm going to exorcise him!
00:37He grew up in the town of Modena in Italy.
00:40At 17, he goes to Rome, he travels to Rome,
00:42he goes to the Paulist Brotherhood,
00:45he says to the chief priest,
00:47you know, I want to become a priest, I've had a calling.
00:51And that man says, you're not old enough.
00:54You've got no life experience,
00:55you've got nothing to teach people,
00:58or empathise with,
00:59so come back when you've got some more life experience.
01:02Now, it's 1942.
01:04The Second World War is raging, you know.
01:07Italy is, of course, a fascist country at this point in time.
01:10Gabriel Amorth gets back to Modena and
01:14makes the decision to join the resistance there.
01:17He becomes a partisan fighter.
01:18So now, this is a young man
01:20who knows he has a calling to serve God.
01:22Now he has a gun in his hand and he's shooting to kill.
01:26He's wounded himself during that experience,
01:28comes out of his war years and goes into law school,
01:33completes his law degree,
01:35and then starts working as a journalist,
01:36but still has this feeling, this calling.
01:39So he goes back to that same brother at the Paulists
01:44and says, the calling is still with me.
01:48And the guy says, well now, 10 years later,
01:51you have that experience I was talking about.
01:54You'll have that empathy,
01:55you have some wisdom on board,
01:56you've had extreme experiences.
01:58So when people are in peril or when they're sad or whatever,
02:02you've got something to say, so come on board.
02:04So then he goes to theology school when he's nearly 30.
02:08So that's the beginning of the next section of his life,
02:10which is 30 years with the Paulists,
02:14which is about communication.
02:17He produces radio, he produces television,
02:19he writes hundreds and hundreds of articles.
02:22He becomes this incredible figure.
02:24It's not till he's turning 60 that Father Candido
02:28picks him to take over as chief exorcist.
02:32And from what I read and talked to people about,
02:35Amorth was shocked.
02:37He didn't, he was like, how can that possibly be?
02:40I'm basically, yes, I am a priest, but I'm a journalist.
02:44How can you be coming to me to talk about
02:46being an exorcist, you know?
02:48And Father Candido said,
02:49I can't tell you why you're the one, Gabrielle,
02:52but I just know you're the one.
02:55And that leads him to being the chief exorcist
02:57for the Vatican for 36 years,
02:59and writing 12 books about his experiences.
03:02I found him as a character absolutely fascinating.
03:06And the two things that it boiled down to for me,
03:09the reason I believe he was so effective in his job,
03:12is the purity of his belief on one hand,
03:15and the availability of his sense of humor on the other hand.
03:19If you're dealing with afflicted people all the time,
03:21you're dealing with people that are in the darkest phases
03:23of their life and their families around them,
03:27and you're the man who's supposed to be trying
03:29to bring some relief to that person,
03:31or bring that person to the light,
03:33you can imagine that having a sense of humor
03:36would be very important to keeping your own sanity.
03:38My favorite thing that he said
03:40is probably when he said, you should never do yoga.
03:45Because yoga requires of you
03:49to put yourself at the center of the universe.
03:53And surely, that is a position that should be occupied by God.
03:58So just do stretching.
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