If you’ve seen the film based on William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, then Sony’s The Pope’s Exorcist has little more to offer, other than some of the most ridiculous rewriting of history since the Lost Cause of Confederacy. The scares aren’t there, the demonic antics are cliché, and the entire story exists only to drive home the point that everything bad that happens is diabolical, and the Catholic Church is the ultimate good.
“The Devil is afraid of me”
Actor, musician, and otherwise heartthrob Russell Crowe stars in The Pope’s Exorcist as Father Gabriele Amorth, Italian priest of the Society of Saint Paul and exorcist for the Diocese of Rome, who in 1990 founded the International Association of Exorcists and presided over the organization until his death in 2016. A prolific author of more than 30 books, the only thing Amorth did more than write was supposedley exorcise demons. Amorth claimed to have performed “over 50,000” exorcisms, with 30,000 of them having been done over nine years, a feat which Edward Peters, a professor of canon law says, “would have required roughly one case a month to be thoroughly examined and processed over nine years with hardly a break.” In otherwise, it’s a claim which ought to be met with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Father Amorth, at least in the film, is a controversial figure. Appointed by none other than the Pope himself, he finds himself having earned the personal animosity of a sneering American Cardinal named Sullivan, who’s skeptical of the reality of demonic possession and considers Amorth to be an obstacle in the way of the Catholic Church modernizing. As someone who believes in the literal existence of evil, Amorth counters that the growing power of the Devil makes the Church more relevant than ever.
Despite his enemies, the Pope ends up assigning Amorth to a case in Spain, where both medical professionals and the local Father Tomas Esquibel are unable to explain the bizarre behavior of a young boy named Henry. Surprise — he’s possessed! The Pope cryptically mentions that the Abbey of San Sebastian, which Henry’s mother has taken the responsibility of restoring, has given the Church problems in the past, setting up a supernatural mystery that will be fleshed out later.
In Nomine de Nostri Satanas
The big reveal of The Pope’s Exorcist is that the Abbey was built on top of a pagan temple constructed by the worshippers of the demon Asmodeus, one of the Kings of Hell who appears in grimoires such as the Ars Goetia and Barrett’s The Magus, as well as texts on demonology such as the Malleus Maleficarum and Dictionaire Infernal. While you might be wondering why these movies never feature lesser-known demons (and don’t Kings of Hell have anything better to do?), it turns out Asmodeus lured Father Amorth to the Abbey as part of his grand, master plan.
You see, hundreds of years ago, Asmodeus possessed Friar Alonso de Ojeda, master exorcist and head of the Abbey, then convinced Queen Isabella I of Castile to kickstart the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, leading to centuries of persecution and bloodshed. Which, you know, was not a good look for the Church. When the Vatican finally realized what was going on, they imprisoned de Ojeda (and therefore Asmodeus) in a chamber beneath the abbey. Now that Asmodeus has been freed by the restorative construction, he looks to pick up where he left off centuries ago, by possessing Father Amorth.
In reality, the Spanish Inquisition was born from a complex interplay of historical, political, and economic factors. Spain was a uniquely multi-religious and multi-ethnic country compared to its European neighbors, owing to centuries of trade and cultural exchange between the Islamic-controlled Iberian peninsula and eastern Islamic nations, following the conquest by the Umayyad caliphate in 710 AD. Following a series of pogroms as well as several centuries of military campaigns known as the Reconquista, in which the Catholic Church and several Christian states tried to wrest control from the Islamic Moores, Pope Sixtus IV issued a papal bull, Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus, on November 1, 1478, authorizing Catholic monarchs to appoint inquisitors to enforce church dogma and expel the Jewish population of Spain. While the marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon helped unite the Christian forces of Spain and arguably abetted the Spanish Inquisition, Isabella I had nothing directly to do with it, and Father Alonso de Ojeda is an entirely fictional creation.
“Your sins will seek you out”
Trying to shift the blame for centuries of persecution away from the Catholic Church isn’t even the most questionable thing The Pope’s Exorcist does. A recurrent theme throughout the film is that one’s sins will “seek you out,” as both Father Amorth and his reluctant assistant, Father Tomas Esquibel, both come face-to-face with past mistakes, courtesy of Asmodeus. Amorth struggles with guilt over the suicide of a mentally ill woman whom he refused to help since she wasn’t actually possessed, and Esquibel wrestles with having had a sexual relationship with a young woman who was part of his parish.
First, while suicide is tragic and perhaps there was more that Father Amorth (or at least his fictional counterpart) could’ve done, there are very good reasons why the Vatican will only involve exorcists in a potential “possession” after mental illness has been ruled out. High profile cases such as that of Anneliese Michel (who may have suffered from delusions and other symptoms associated with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy), in which individuals undergoing exorcism died while under the care of Catholic priests, were part of the reason for the revision of the Rite of Exorcism in De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam, published in 1999.
Second, considering that a recent investigation by the Spanish Catholic Church into child sex abuse allegations revealed “728 alleged abusers and 927 victims since the 1940s,” it might have been wise to avoid any kind of story involving a priest having sexual relations with those under his pastoral care. The Pope’s Exorcist focuses entirely on Father Esquibel’s guilt over having chosen his priestly vows over his love for a girl — not his guilt in having pursued a relationship in which there was arguably a power imbalance. Would her family have considered his attention a betrayal of their trust, as it certainly was a betrayal of his vows? The film doesn’t care. It wants you to think of the exorcists as the ultimate Good Guys in battle against supernatural forces of Evil.
The final word
The Pope’s Exorcist is entertaining so far as demonic possession films go. Crowe’s performance is good, and everyone else does a serviceable job. Overall, it’s an okay film with a very problematic agenda of historical revisionism. Unfortunately, the end of Pope’s Exorcist sets up the potential for some kind of exorcisim cinematic universe, with Fathers Amorth and Esquibel accepting the Pope’s task to seek out 192 other sites similar to the Abbey of San Sebastian — locations where the Rebel Angels who followed Lucifer supposedly fell to Earth and have desecrated the ground. I don’t imagine this film could spawn an equal number of sequels; eventually Baal will become banal and the special effects department’s reserves of pea soup will run dry.
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