An 18th Century fresco in Fr. Vincenzo Taraborelli’s Roman church shows a possessed woman being held with her mouth open and little devils coming out of her body. “She’s being freed,” he said.
It is a scene Fr. Taraborelli, says he knows well. The 79-year old priest has performed exorcisms – the Catholic ritual of driving out evil spirits – for the past 27 years.
He stumbled into the job when a fellow priest needed assistance. The senior priest didn’t study it and he didn’t know what to do, but his colleague told him what to do, he said.
He has since become one of Rome’s most in demand exorcists, and the Catholic Church is straining to find younger successors.
Before doing exorcisms, he urges people to see a psychiatrist or a psychologist, and requests them to bring him their prognosis, the priest said. He is in touch with several psychologists who send their patients to him.
A cabinet is lined with many small statues of angels on one side of the room. He stores a supply of sweets in a drawer to hand out to visitors. An official document showing his qualification as an exorcist hangs on the wall.
Before anything else, the father says he gets the room ready. If the person is not doing well, he tries to calm him down by reassuring him. He invites him to join him in prayer, but many are already disturbed when they come to him.
His most noteworthy case concerned a married woman he treated for 13 years.
Another man, who was a Satanist, wanted her,” he remembers. “She refused. So this man told her: ‘You’ll pay for this.’ He cast so-called spells to attract her to him, twice a week.
Then they came to him. He started to pray as she went into a trance. She blurted out insults and blasphemies, and he quickly understood that she was possessed.
As the ritual continued, her condition started to worsen so Fr. Taraborelli told the devil: “in the name of Jesus, I order you to go away”, she started to vomit little metal pins. Aside from pins, she would also vomit hair braids, pieces of wood, little stones, the priest continued.
The concept of possession by the devil is an accepted belief within the Catholic Church. As in the recent killing of 85-year-old French priest Fr. Jacques Hamel in his church in Rouen, France, it is sometimes used to explain murderous behavior.
However, many doubt the whole origin of exorcism and demonic possession.
Non-believers claim the supposed possession by evil spirits is simply a medieval myth or superstition. Those who maintain to be influenced by evil spirits are people suffering from easily justifiable psychiatric or psychological problems, they say.
Fr. Taraborelli rebuffs the cynicism. He argues that someone who isn’t a believer doesn’t believe in the devil either. “But someone who believes knows that the devil exists, you can read it in the gospel,” he added.
No takers of job as exorcist
Fr. Taraborelli shows no indication of desiring to give up his work and his mobile phone rings regularly.
But younger priests are not specifically interested by the prospect of devoting hours in windowless rooms, reading exorcism rites to troubled believers.
“I told the bishop that I can’t find anyone willing to do this. Many of them are scared. Even priests can be scared. It’s a difficult life,” he said.
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