Russell Crowe exorcist pic inspired by Vatican priest who ‘cast out demons’ 160K times

nypost.com:

declared of the new movie “The Pope’s Exorcist,” starring Russell Crowe, which hits theaters Friday.The 29-year-old Catholic organization added: “The end result is to instill the conviction that exorcism is an abnormal, monstrous and frightening phenomenon, whose only protagonist is the devil, whose violent reactions can be faced with great difficulty.”There’s more to their ire than Hollywood’s flair for exaggeration.

The IAE, it turns out, has a personal beef with the movie.The supernatural horror film takes its inspiration from their late founder, Father Gabriele Amorth (played by Crowe), who held the title of chief exorcist of the Vatican for more than two decades.

If a person was believed to be inhabited by Satan or another nefarious force, he was their go-to guy.Firebrand Amorth claimed to have presided over some 160,000 exorcisms during his lifetime. “I speak with the Devil every day,” Amorth, who died in 2016 at age 91, told the Sunday Telegraph in 2004. “I talk to him in Latin.

He answers in Italian. I have been wrestling with him, day in day out.”Born in 1925 in Modena, Italy, Amorth got into demon demolition in 1986 after he was unexpectedly made the assistant to Father Candido Amantini, then Italy’s only exorcist. “From that day, I dropped everything and dedicated myself entirely to exorcism,” he told the Telegraph.