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Devils, demons and evil spirits.
Since time began, they have stalked our souls and priests have tried to
cast them out.
Does evil really walk the earth?
Or is it just inside our minds? Does modern medicine hold the key?
What happens when science faces religion in the battle for the
possession of men's souls?
Enter the 5th Dimension and the secret world of exorcism.
An exorcist carries out an ancient rite to drive out the devil infesting
a human body.
Not sometime in our dark past, but now in the modern world.
Demonic possession, it means that somehow, the entire personality of the
individual has been taken over by evil forces, by supernatural evil.
The entire person has come under possession by Satan or by evil
spirits.
Germany, 1977.
24-year-old, Anneliese Michel, trapped in the last throws of a catholic
tradition.
She endured the horrors of exorcism until she died at the hands of her
saviors.
A sick girl or a vessel for demons.
One priest has no doubts.
I have performed thousands of exorcisms and these tapes, I have
heard enough of them.
Hearing her voice, her whining, her behavior.
The devil was definitely present here.
The Biblical symptoms of possession are things like shouting, talking in
tongues, her hallucinatory states, jerking, stiffening.
All of these things can also occur in epileptic seizures, due to the
excessive discharges of the part of the brain involved in the attack.
When it comes to the idea of possession, the truth isn't out there,
it's up here and we need to look to science and not religion for the
answers.
In 1978, two opposing forces inside the Roman Catholic Church collided in
a small town in Germany.
On one side the modernizers, scientific and rational, trying to
implement the reforms of Vatican II.
On the other the traditionalist, wanting to hold to the old beliefs.
For whom devils and demons were a reality.
They felt that the power of evil was rising, not just in Germany, but
worldwide.
In the face of the enemy, glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the
Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.
Power for Christ compelled you.
It's the power of Christ, that compels you.
Christ compels you.
Power of Christ compels you.
God himself commend you.
American academic and writer, Michael Cuneo.
In the United States, exorcism was not practiced really widely at all, up
until the early 1970's.
Americans didn't think of exorcism.
They didn't think of demons.
When they had some problem the movie changed this and not only that movie,
but all of the knock offs, the imitation movies because there were so
many movies that followed from that one.
1962, and Pope John XIII initiated Vatican II, the great ecumenical
council.
His agenda, to bring the Roman Catholic Church into the modern world.
It was a turning point in history.
The Pope feared his holy charge would be left behind as the world moved on.
He wanted a new era of progress and enlightenment and his flock to reach
out to other religions.
Many agreed with him wholeheartedly, but some didn't.
For them strength lay in the old ways, the ancient beliefs and rituals.
They feared revisions would weaken the eternal struggle against evil.
The reality of demons and using exorcism to drive them out was one
area where the church was split.
Veteran Exorcist, Don Gabriele Amorth.
Jesus wants us to perform exorcism.
Yes, He even empowers us too, Mark 16:17
"Those who believe in me will chase away the demons in My name."
One only has to believe in Jesus Christ, to have the power to chase
away the demons in His name.
Klingenberg, Bavaria.
In 1975, something happened here, which gave the exorcist their chance.
The subject... 24 year old, Anneliese Michel.
Covering the story was Journalist, Helge Cramer.
The first thing that came to mind was that, this was like something out of
the Middle Ages when people saw the devil is real.
This kind of things didn't belong to our enlightened times.
This was the last official church act of exorcism in Germany.
Two priests with family and friends carried out the ritual.
Twice a week for nine months, six hours a day.
Peter Hein was there.
It went on for about an hour and a half.
I can remember, as we were finished with this one.
Padre Arnold said, "Okay, it's time for a break." So, that Anneliese can
get some rest.
Suddenly, she began, "Rest? There is no rest here, it goes on and on."
It sent a cold tingle down my spine.
It gave me goosebumps.
It took a terrible toll.
After nine months Anneliese Michel weighed just 31 kilos.
Time and again she injured herself.
I witnessed how she was beaten by the demons.
It happened like this and like that.
On the 1st of July, 1976, starved and exhausted Anneliese Michel died.
Her priest and her family believed whatever they had done had saved her
soul.
They believed that she was enduring possession by devils for the good of
others.
Franz Knothe was one of those priests.
She made a promise to God, that she accepted the possession.
The possession of all these demons, for the savior of Germany and its
youth.
She accepted this as atonement.
This is why she wasn't cured and accepted her death.
But need she have died.
How does modern medicine assess her symptoms?
Professor Simon Shovrun works at London's Institute of Neurology,
specializing in epilepsy.
Patients sometimes think that epilepsy is a form of madness, but this isn't
true.
Epilepsy is a physical disorder of a brain.
Epileptic fits happens when the brains biochemical rhythms get out of
balance.
It's like an electrical short circuit with terrifying effect.
When the discharges affect different parts of the brain, you get different
types of symptoms.
For instance, if the discharges affect the motor areas of the brain, you
might get jerking or stiffening of the body.
If they affect parts of the brain which involve good memory, you may get
abnormal memories.
It affects, parts of the brain affect to do with vision, you may get visual
disturbances and hallucinations.
Stiffening, hallucinations and hearing voices, all symptoms that that
possessed Anneliese had displayed.
Two years after the girl's death, a German nun announced she had a
miraculous dream.
She said deep in her grave Anneliese Michel's corpse was still in perfect
condition, proved she had died for the sins of the world.
Desperate to see the evidence that their daughter had not died in vain,
her parents had asked for an exhumation.
The macabre occasion aroused huge interest from believers and
unbelievers alike.
Crowds were waiting for the miracle, but official then was not impressed.
Thea Hein is a friend of the family.
So, they stood there, men and women to the left and the right.
They were denied entry.
Then an official produced the order that said, "You're not getting in, no
question about that."
We grouped together and suggested that maybe the padre should enter instead,
but he passed the order to the padre too, who was also denied entry.
Nobody was allowed in, nobody.
The parents never saw their daughter's body.
The police insisted the corpse was too decomposed for anyone to be allowed to
view it and the grave diggers who dug up and re-buried her saw nothing
miraculous.
So you were present when the coffin was opened?
Yes.
You were there?
Yes, I was there.
So did something appear a halo or markings or...
Well, I didn't see anything.
Nothing of that nature?
I didn't see anything.
Did you see anything?
What do you think she'd appear?
We live in a world where we don't believe in hocus-pocus anymore.
When the person is ready, then he is gone, that's that.
Sometime later Mr. Michel showed me a photograph.
He told me that the hand of the devil could be seen on it and therefore this
proved the existence of the role of the devil in Anneliese Michel's case.
This is the photographic evidence, carefully examined and from certain
angles the outline of her perfectly preserved body might possibly be seen
and also the hand of the devil.
Official skepticism did not deter the family.
Their belief that Anneliese had been possessed by the devil was
unshakeable.
The reality of the demons of hell is the rock on which Rome's senior
exorcist faith is founded.
Don Gabriel Amorth has performed the rite a hundred of times, even when his
own church was reluctant to allow it.
Even in those days there was not enough exorcism in Germany.
It was the bishops and priests who could be held responsible for this
because they didn't believe and he who doesn't believe in the devil in
possession doesn't believe in the gospel.
The Middle Ages, centuries of desperation and hunger, war and
plague.
Possession became the universal reason for illness, madness or simple wrong
doing.
Exorcism the cure.
In the name of Christ, thousands died.
Professor Michael Cuneo has written extensively about it.
Exorcism is virtually as old as religion itself and so in Medieval
Europe there would be local priest and local health and healing practioners,
who would formally or informally try to expel people of their spirits, of
their evil spirits.
Within Roman Catholicism there was this traditionalist legacy, this
heritage of believing in evil spirits and demons and the possibility of
demonization.
Until 30 years ago, all Roman Catholic priests were trained in the rites.
The Rituale Romanum of 1614 lays down when exorcism should be used and list
the signs of possession.
Horror of religious objects, supernatural powers and secret
knowledge are on the list.
So were exceptional strength and speaking strangely.
But some of these symptoms are also ones modern medicine recognizes in
many kinds of disturbed behavior.
At London University, psychologist Chris French has made a study of
illness in history.
If you look at the kinds of behavior in the past and in modern times is
often labeled as signs of possession.
We can see that very often they correspond to modern, psychiatric and
neurological conditions, things like for example, schizophrenia, perhaps
depression, certain epilepsy and Tourette's syndrome.
Anneliese Michel was a tragic victim of modern ignorance.
Klingenberg on the river Main.
Anneliese was born here in 1952, oldest of four sisters.
Her father, Josef a carpenter, her mother Ann Maria a housewife, deeply
religious they followed the Old Catholic ways.
As a child she was often ill, the family didn't trust doctors, but they
did trust their church.
30 years ago, her mother remembered her daughter.
Even as a girl her whole attitude was very devotional.
We raised her like that because of her illness she felt very close to God and
always said, "God will always come first in my life."
At first she was a normal school girl, whose ambition was to teach religious
studies.
Then in 1963, she had her first fit.
The symptoms were clear, rigid body and then shaking all over.
The doctor diagnosed epilepsy, but her parents were reluctant to accept it
and although medical drugs were available, she didn't take them.
She became depressed and withdrawn.
It was the first indication of her troubled future.
Living with epilepsy itself can cause depression, in a way which is
independent of the brain discernments.
People treat people differently, people are stigmatized, they are
shunned and what these drugs do is insulate the nerve cells in a sense,
so that the short circuiting which is occurring is suppressed.
These don't do anything about the underlying propensity to have a
seizure, they don't cure the condition, but they do suppress the
condition, whilst the drugs are being taken.
But at 16, Anneliese was getting worse.
Her fits were more frequent.
She started to believe she was wicked and she would punish herself for the
sins of others.
This is common with epileptics.
Someone who is suffering from depression and therefore will be
suffering from certain types of delusion, will certainly feel that
they were worthless and perhaps are being punished in some way for the
sins they committed.
She wasn't allowed to sleep, wasn't allowed to rest.
Anneliese couldn't sleep in her bed for years.
She had to sleep on the floor and she had to freeze during winter time.
It was cruel how she suffered.
1968 and Anneliese is in hospital.
Her parents had accepted her strange behavior, but the harsh self imposed
regime had made her very ill with tuberculosis.
In hospital for months, homesick and unhappy, her delusions became worse.
After one fit the devil appeared to her in her room, but she kept this
secret.
She was terrified of her visions, but too frightened to tell anyone else.
She thought if they knew, she would be called mad and would never achieve her
life's ambition to be a teacher.
Her doctors tried to help.
One way to diagnose epilepsy is with an EEG machine.
It measures brain activity and shows up the excessive electrical
discharges.
Knowing her history of fits, the doctors sent her to the clinic at
Wurzburg University.
Professor, Yobes Bunning is a psychiatrist here.
And here we see a clipping from the original EEG, left we can see a wave
formation, it's an acute wave and slowly preceding delta wave.
Here also an acute wave, a spike and a slow delta wave.
This is not a typical spike wave pattern, but very similar.
After these earlier insights, precise, positive and AMISYS and EEG, which is
a functional recording of brain wave activity was clear.
The most probable diagnosis was epilepsy.
The centre for epileptic research in Bonn, round the clock observation of
the patients.
It's a condition as old as history, only the rational ancient Greeks
diagnosed sickness of the brain.
To everyone else it was clearly demonic possession.
I believe you can see how some of the fits we recorded on video, definitely
could raise the idea that in this condition, this person appears
possessed.
An epileptic fit, initiated under medical supervision in order to
measure the brain activity.
Professor Christian Elger from the Research Center.
I have patients who describe how the entire room burst into flames, even
the sofa they are sitting on.
This phenomenon spreads, more or less causing a typical temporal lobe fit,
which is not the case for the schizophrenic forms of psychosis.
In these cases, these perceptions and hearing of voices are permanent and
often have a threatening nature.
1973, Anneliese has achieved her ambition to train as a teacher in
Wurzburg.
She's accepted the epilepsy and agreed to be treated.
As long as she takes her medication, life can appear normal.
Nobody suspects the terrors which filled her mind, the delusions are
getting worse.
She can hear noises, thinks she's being pursued by the devil.
She keeps working, but her essay betrays here.
The title "Coping with Fear."
It's not so surprising that someone who is brought up in a very religious
background, who suffers from epilepsy, which involves involuntary movements
and the feeling that one has been taken over and also depression would
actually end up being with the delusion that they are actually
possessed by Satan or by evil spirits.
That would make sense of the situation to them.
The Chapel of the Madone of Engelberg near Klingenberg.
It's a place of pilgrimage for devout Catholics.
Anneliese Michel came to find relief from her suffering.
Her medications were keeping the fits under control, but her mind was not at
peace.
The Archangel Michael's victory over the devil confirmed she was trapped in
the battle between good and evil.
One day she had a vision of the *** Mary, explaining her illness came from
God and had a higher purpose to atone for the lost souls in the land.
Believing the divine instructions, Anneliese gave up her medications and
let the illness take its course.
If a patient stops taking the drugs and if they still have a propensity to
have epileptic seizures and when the drugs were off, the seizures will
reoccur and the person may experience a delusion or hallucination or symptom
which is repeated in every seizure.
So for instance, if somebody hears voices during an attack, it will be
the same voices in each seizure, often saying exactly the same thing and this
is obvious when you think about it, because it's the same part of the
brain which is being activated in each seizure.
Kleinwallstadt Church, a catholic mass in the old tradition.
The prayers are in Latin, the words unchanged for thousand years.
Here the Vatican Council's reforms were rejected.
The congregation wanted to hold on to the unchanged rituals, the ancient
beliefs.
Anneliese felt at home here, she too longed for certainty.
Many of the congregation were devout pilgrims, seeking comfort at holy
shrines.
Thea Hein was the organizer.
In 1975, Anneliese joined them on a trip to Italy.
It was a fateful decision.
Their goal was San Damiano outside of CC, built by Saint Francis in the 13th
century.
The *** Mary is said to appear here.
The Vatican no longer officially recognize these appearances, but for
many this was a place to seek help and comfort.
Urged by her father, Anneliese had joined the group.
But when they arrived at the shrine, she refused to get out of the bus.
So I went back to the bus shortly before 12, to see if everyone had got
off and been to see the Mother of God and as I get there, who is still
sitting in the bus, Anneliese Michel?
So I said, "Get out of there, I said, you won't find mercy in this bus, you
will find mercy over there with the Mother of God."
At first she didn't want to go.
So I took her by the hand and let her out.
Anneliese had recently stopped taking her medication and her behavior was
starting to change.
So, Anneliese breaks free from my hand and starts to run and she looked very
strange.
She took great big steps; she didn't walk the way she normally walked.
I handed her a glass of the San Damiano water.
She held it to her mouth, she wanted to drink from it, but then suddenly
she put the glass down saying, "This stinks, this stinks."
Her refusal sealed her faith.
The next day I think, Mr. Michel came and I told him what I thought, what I
had detected.
"Is Anneliese possessed or is she confused?" something is not right with
her.
From that moment nothing could stop the tragedy and Anneliese's was the
central role.
People who believe they are obsessed demonically or possessed demonically,
that they have been influenced to an enormous extent by their culture, by
their cultural circumstances.
Sometimes by their family upbringing, sometimes by the churches they go to.
Sometimes there are real terrific peer pressures and cultural pressures
acting on people to convince them that they are demonized and that the
problems they are experiencing are truly the result of demonic influence
rather than something else.
However, her family was convinced that she was possessed by the devil and
called on their church for help.
Rumors of her behavior had begun to ripple through the community.
In the nearby town, a priest, Father Anst Alt collapsed while praying for
her.
Alt was a tradionalist, troubled by the reforms of Vatican II.
A firm believer in the reality of devils and demonic possession.
His collapse confirmed his feeling that evil was loose in his flock.
Ridding Anneliese of her demons became his own personal crusade.
Journalist Helge Cramer covered the case from the beginning.
I felt that it was actually Alt, who was the driving force of this story.
A chaplain and a spiritual person, He was completely convinced that this was
a case of possession and that the whole world should know about it.
Alt was convinced exorcism was the right course, but he needed help with
the ritual.
He found it in the Convent of Jesuits in Frankfurt, Saint George.
80 year old Jesuit, Father Adolf Rodewyk, had performed many hundreds
of exorcism and agreed to see Anneliese.
At that first meeting with neurologist, Ulrich Niemann.
So, Rodewyk came to the house.
Anneliese Michel was somewhere in the room.
She had rolled around in muck and dirt and executed 400 knee bends in one
hour, leaving her knees blue.
Then she jumped up and slapped him round the face and at this moment the
priest realized that someone with so much hatred, someone who strikes a
religious person, a sanctified priest, must be possessed by the devil.
For Anneliese this decision was a death sentence.
Her priest dismissed the idea of an ordinary illness.
Epilepsy is out of the question in this case and epileptic collapses and
the fit fades quite quickly.
Yet during the condition of possession, as possession continues
the patient gets worse and worse.
This had nothing to do with the family.
It was mainly factors that were from outside the family that influenced the
case.
The church, the very people who should have helped actually helped strengthen
the case which caused a catastrophe.
Wurzburg, seat of the bishop.
Using Rotarix Diagnosis, Father Alt applied for permission from the bishop
to start the exorcism.
Bishop Josef Stangl, supported the Vatican reforms, but was under intense
pressure from his conservative priest.
I think he granted permission because it was prompted to him by his
advisers.
He made it very clear that they understood what they were dealing
with, they had learnt this from their parochial teachings.
He didn't want anything to be blown out of proportion with rumors.
The situation needed to be taken by the hand and an official exorcism
performed.
On the 16th of December, Bishop Stangl agreed to allow the two priests to
begin the rite.
Their conviction was unshakeable and they felt Anneliese shared it.
She was always convinced that she was possessed.
She usually said she felt this pressure in her head, even if
everything seemed to be all right, but even as she spoke quite normally, when
she worked always this pressure in her head.
She said, "They are in there."
The priests have decided that his was a rare case of atonement possession.
Anneliese's voices really were devils, the devils prompted by God, wanting to
make his anger heard about Vatican II and the unwanted liberalization of his
church.
If they could prove this, it would be a triumph for them and a serious
setback for the modernizers in Rome.
Eight days later the exorcism begins.
Priests, family, friends, supporters all focused on one sick woman.
They repeat prayers and gospels again and again.
Sprinkling holy water, brandishing crucifixes.
They demand that Anneliese should repeat after them.
"Jesus is Lord."
Only then would they know the evil spirit had been driven out back to the
darkness.
I don't know how the rite of exorcism serves different social and
psychological function as you don't know who we are talking about.
For the exorcist and for society as a whole, it reinforces a particular
religious viewpoint there is some kind of battle between good and evil and it
sets the exorcist at the center of that battle with that glorious role.
The exorcism is an anonymous fear of heart out conformity.
People want cooperation and confirmation that they are truly
engaged with supernatural evil.
They want this and it's important to them and they convince themselves that
they are seeing things that really aren't taking place.
Everything was taped.
When the reporter was running, Anneliese's voice became a deep growl.
Speaking in tongues according to the priest.
Outside the sessions, she still spoke normally.
The tapes were sold worldwide.
Anneliese's sufferings provided useful proof of the damage the Vatican
reforms were doing to Germany and the church.
Father Renz was in charge of the marketing.
Those who appear, Lucifer, Judas, Nero rarely, Hitler in very few cases.
Does Hitler belong to the demons?
He belongs to the human demons?
Hitler said, he could imagine himself screaming, "Hail, Hail, Hail." Apart
from that he said nothing and the other demon said about him, "He might
make a lot of noise, but he hasn't got anything interesting to say."
In spite of her epilepsy, no doctors were allowed to attend the terrible
drama being played out in the small house.
Her worsening state was ignored or attribute to the stubborn demons.
Everyone was playing their allotted roles, including the victim.
They see that the person who is exercising them, casting out the evil
spirits is giving them so much of his dedicated time and energy.
They don't want to disappoint the exorcist.
They want to respond and reciprocate somehow and so they will do this by
throwing themselves on the floor.
Trying to vomit, to regurgitate.
They will do it by ripping their clothes off, by screaming, by cursing.
After six weeks of prayers and exaltations, the Michel household
allowed themselves to hope the curse of the demons might have been lifted
from their beloved daughter.
Family friend, Peter Hein was there.
With each exorcism the priest would preach.
They must come out, that they must go.
This was on the 31st of October as far as I can remember and we were all so
looking forward to all of this coming to an end.
Originally, we had thought that the whole thing would be over, if we
performed the exorcism two or three times.
There was even a time; it was the 31st of October, 1975.
When six devils who gave themselves names came out and this procedure for
these six devils took around 40 minutes.
They defended themselves and mumbled, especially when hearing, "Hail Mary,
full of grace." Like someone who can't speak... Ha-ha, ha-ha, Hail Mary.
They suffered immensely to say these words, but then the six devils left
her and for a short time she was free.
We were so happy; we began to sing, "Praise the Lord."
But with the last verse, the last word it started.
The screaming started again.
When a person with epilepsy is stressed, seizures can often get worse
and somebody put under a lot of pressure, emotional or physical often
get worse attacks and this is often a bit of a viscous circle because the
attacks itself induce more pressure, which in itself induces more seizures.
The exorcists was not saving here, but making her worse.
Trying to escape Anneliese began injuring herself.
The devil beat her so badly.
She had lovely pearly teeth.
He smashed her teeth in.
The devil took her head, he banged it against the wall until her entire face
was swollen and bruised.
Then the devil forbade her food or water.
Anneliese wasn't allowed to eat what she wanted anymore.
When she was hungry, she wasn't permitted to eat.
That's what the devil told her.
She shouldn't eat.
She should starve.
She would get nothing, nothing.
So, she collapsed from hunger and thirst.
What I found so dramatic is the fact that within this family something was
happening, where her two sisters and brothers stood there watching as this
girl withered away, believing that she was possessed by the devil.
Not a doctor in sight who could really help her.
On the 1st of July, Anneliese Michel died.
Exhaustion and malnutrition had taken that dreadful toll.
She was just 24.
For the exorcist, it was a holy death.
Atonement for the mistakes of the modern church.
Her soul had been saved.
Scientists find that hard to accept.
I think the only way that science and religion could ever meet on common
ground over the issue of exorcism, is if the religious believers come to
accept that we don't need outmoded medieval concepts like spirit
possession from the Middle Ages to explain what's going on.
We can actually explain what's happening in terms of psychiatric and
neurological conditions.
Nor was the German law impressed.
March 1978, Anneliese's parents, Father Renz and Father Alt were
charged with neglect and assisted suicide.
Why had they refused to let doctors see the dying girl?
Karl Stenger was the family lawyer.
The parents said it quiet clearly.
That if a doctor were to be involved, especially a psychiatrist, then
Anneliese would have been locked away in institution and wouldn't have been
able to become a teacher.
This was partly the reason why medical attention was denied.
All four were given six months probation.
But they objected even to that.
Declaring their innocence and insisting the devil was to blame.
Was he?
I attended dozens of exorcisms.
Of every imaginable persuasion did I at any point encounter a situation in
which I myself was truly and fully convinced that here, here is a clear
cut case of demonization, a clear cut case of diabolical possession.
Did I encounter such a thing?
I would say, no.
None of them had bad intentions, least of all the parents.
They need help, not punishment.
I think it's not a question of punishment, but more a question of
education.
It's more a question of what was going on below the surface and what was left
out.
There is no need to evoke a supernatural explanation for epilepsy.
Modern science has taught us about the chemical changes which occur in
seizures.
We understand what these are.
We understand the death defects which occur.
We understand how the electrical disturbances synchronize.
We understand the physical causes which can result in epileptic seizures
and we understand how the drugs work in epileptic seizures.
For all these reasons it's best to see this simply as a physical disease of
the brain.
But education and science may not be winning the battle.
At a time when many churches see their members dropping.
All around the world the numbers have reported exorcisms are increasing.
In the U.S. alone it's thought to be a thousand every year.
The rituals vary widely, but the purpose is the same.
To drive out demons.
Michael Cuneo has watched its rise.
Exorcism did indeed make a comeback in the United States during the 1970's
and it remains today so very much alive.
Imagine this, the United States which is arguably the most technologically
advanced.
The most scientifically accomplished and advanced nation in the history of
the world.
Imagine exorcism flourishing in the United States.
It's a very curious development.
People are looking for alibi stories.
Everybody wants to be a victim.
People want to escape more responsibility.
It prevents people to escape taking responsibility for their own lives and
their own actions.
It allows them to put blame on demons.
Anneliese's faith shocked the world and her church.
Two years after her death, the German bishop set up a commission of inquiry.
They sent an urgent request to the Vatican that the rite should be
reformed.
They didn't expect it to be abolished altogether, but understood that cases
like this harmed the modern church.
In 1999, after 400 years a new Rituale Romanum was published.
Devils and possession were to be treated in a much more modern way.
Psychiatric help was to be the church's response in future.
But the conservatives fought back.
Don Gabriele Amorth, veteran of many Vatican battles has never changed his
position on exorcism.
He believes the church is now with him again.
In the case of the two exorcisms performed by the pope, which became
very well known.
I think in these cases he wanted to appoint new exorcists and have priests
accept this role.
Pope John Paul II is a traditionalist on many aspects of Catholic dogma and
life.
When he was a parish priest in Poland, he undertook two exorcisms.
People like Don Amorth, think he understands the reality of evil and
the danger of ignoring its manifestations.
This sentence is not mine, but from Pope John II.
Well, I let him know that I will be meeting with so many bishops, who
didn't believe in the devil.
He answered abruptly, "He, who doesn't believe in the devil, doesn't believe
in the gospel."
Anneliese's parents built a shrine to their daughter in Klingenberg, the
town where she lived her short life.
Perhaps she did achieve her sacrifice for other people.
Since her death no Catholic in Germany has been subjected to the horrors
inflicted on her.
No bewildered victim has died in such pain.
But to the end her parents believed she really was possessed.
And even on the last day, two hours before she died she developed such
strength, she performed hundreds of exercises and pulled us up and down
with her and she screamed so the people could hear her streets away.
They don't want to believe that, that the world as we see it is all there
is, that reality is exhausted by the images that are flickering before as
on our computer screens.
That reality is exhausted by the way this development in
psycho-pharmacology.
If Michael Cuneo is right, rational answers of medicine and science are
not enough.
People want more... however dangerous.
They want to believe that there is one last domain, one last frontier of real
drama and mystery.
Hence supernatural evil, the possibility of some final conflict
between the forces, ultimate forces of goodness and evil.
Something that we can truly be in awe off.
Something which is mysterious and holy and sacred and ineffable.
Something which leaves us trembling.