Exorcism

Catholic exorcism follows a defined structure: the exorcist (an ordained priest with episcopal permission) recites prayers, reads scripture, and commands the possessing entity to leave in the name of Jesus Christ. The Rituale Romanum specifies signs the Church uses to distinguish possession from illness — including aversion to sacred objects, speaking in unknown languages, and superhuman strength — though the Church itself insists these criteria require ruling out psychiatric and neurological explanations first. Psychiatric literature classifies most possession-like episodes as dissociative identity disorder, psychosis, or conversion disorder. The Catholic Church's official position since at least the 20th century is that genuine possession is rare and that exorcism should never substitute for medical evaluation. Islam has a parallel practice called Ruqyah, involving Quranic recitation. Pentecostal and charismatic Christian traditions practice deliverance ministry, a less formalized version.

Exorcism rites appear in Mesopotamian texts from roughly 2000 BCE, where Babylonian priests performed incantations against evil spirits called Utukku. The Hebrew Bible references spirit expulsion, and the New Testament records Jesus performing exorcisms multiple times. The Catholic Church formalized the rite in the Rituale Romanum, published in 1614 under Pope Paul V — a text that remained the standard for over 350 years. It was revised in 1999 under Pope John Paul II, with updated language and an explicit requirement for medical consultation before proceeding. The modern public profile of exorcism owes a great deal to William Peter Blatty's 1971 novel The Exorcist, based on a documented 1949 case involving a boy referred to as Roland Doe in Cottage City, Maryland. William Friedkin's 1973 film adaptation brought the subject to mass cultural awareness. Father Gabriele Amorth served as chief exorcist of the Vatican from 1986 until his death in 2016 and claimed to have performed tens of thousands of exorcisms.

If you're researching exorcism seriously, start with the 1999 revised Rituale Romanum — an English translation is available through Catholic publishers. For the 1949 case behind The Exorcist, journalist Mark Opsasnick's investigative piece 'The Haunted Boy of Cottage City' (Strange Magazine, 1999) is the most thorough on-the-record account. Father Gabriele Amorth's book An Exorcist Tells His Story (1999) gives the believer-practitioner perspective in plain terms. For the skeptical counterpart, Joe Nickell's work in Skeptical Inquirer covers multiple possession and exorcism cases with documented alternative explanations. Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's People of the Lie (1983) sits unusually in the middle — a clinician who took the phenomenon seriously without abandoning diagnostic rigor.