Casting out Satan

 Robbie Mannheim lived the life of an average 14-year-old American boy until the death of his Aunt Harriet. The distraught boy decided to contact the deceased during a séance—he and his aunt, while she was alive, conjured spirits. Soon after, strange noises could be heard throughout the house where Robbie lived, and the boy himself changed beyond recognition—he began cursing profanely, and traces of self-inflicted wounds could be found on his body.

The boy's parents suspected mental illness and took him to a doctor. The doctor declared the boy sane, mentally and physically, which sparked the parents' theory that Robbie was possessed by the devil. A priest supported the parents and decided to free the boy's soul. During an exorcism at a local hospital, when the priest sang "Deliver Us from Evil," Robbie broke free from his seat belt and began blindly swinging at a spring he had ripped from the bed. The wounds inflicted on the priest's arm required over a hundred stitches.

This is just a fragment of the four-month ordeal that began in April 1949 for the boy, whose real name was to be kept secret. His family lived in a suburb of Washington, D.C. The exorcism was reported in the Washington Post on August 20, 1949, after a leak about the ritual prompted an article about it in The Catholic Review. The story inspired William Peter Blatty, who wrote the best-selling book The Exorcist.

Blatt contacted Father William Bowdern, one of the priests involved in the exorcisms. The priest refused to reveal any information, having sworn the family to secrecy.

Bowdern kept a journal while conducting exorcisms, a copy of which came into the possession of the writer Thomas Allen in 1986. Another priest, Father Walter Hallorano, who assisted in these exorcisms, gave a copy of the journal to the writer.

This is how Allen learned about the exorcisms conducted over the course of a month by a group of Jesuits in the home of a possessed person at a hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. They prayed and sprinkled the possessed person's body with holy water. The symptoms of possession appeared at night, when Robbie screamed and destroyed everything around him, spat on the priests, and cursed them. When the sun rose, the boy calmed down. The wounds on his body looked like thorns, and the flowing blood formed inscriptions like "HELL" or "EVIL."

The priests prayed constantly in Latin—they believed that this was the way Christ would come to confront the devil. After 24 nights of exorcism (on Easter Monday 1949), Robbie opened his eyes and said, "He's gone."

Doctors who reviewed Robbie's case concluded that he may have suffered from one of the following mental illnesses:

Automatism - a state manifested by mechanical, non-voluntary actions, accompanying certain forms of schizophrenia

Gilles de la Tourette syndrome - during which sufferers emit uncontrolled screams, grunts, and use, often against their will, vulgar language

obsession - manifested by compulsive experiencing of certain thoughts or emotions or performing certain actions, often unrelated to a given situation, with full awareness of absurdity.

However, the doctors examining the boy found none of these ailments.

O saceros Christi, tu scis me esse diabolum. Cur me derogas? - words spoken by Robbie Mannheim in Latin (O priest of Christ, do you know that I am the devil? Why do you disturb me?) .

Allen managed to reach Robbie. According to the writer, Robbie was "the innocent victim of a terrifying, incomprehensible force whose cultural and psychological roots run deeper than Christianity."

Contemporary Catholicism has an ambivalent attitude towards exorcisms. On the one hand, it approaches these matters with reserve, relying on the opinions of psychiatrists, and on the other, it often performs exorcisms in secret. Pope John Paul II himself is also rumored to have exorcised a demon from the soul of a young woman in 1982.

Father Gabriele Amorth spoke openly about his practices. The Rome-based priest claimed to have performed over 50,000 exorcisms in his life, but only 84 were considered actual cases of demonic possession. He considers the victim's unusually strong physical strength, the use of foreign languages unknown to the victim, and knowledge of hidden details about other people's lives to be symptoms of demonic possession.

Many people believe that demonic possessions do not occur, and that anyone who believes they are possessed should consult a doctor. Some scholars also believe that the priest often imposes this idea on someone who comes to him with problems.

"The demon does not physically inhabit the body; it takes control of the possessed person's will. We must force it to reveal itself," says Father Malachi Martin, an exorcist.

Skeptics believe that such practices attract people seeking attention for themselves and their problems. But what should we do with the testimonies of rational people who, during exorcisms, encountered the action of a terrifying and seemingly inexplicable force? According to Thomas Allen, Father Bowdern's diary, which describes the boy's possession in 1949, lists nine Jesuits involved in the exorcism. Allen also discovered a church report on the exorcism signed by 48 witnesses.

Are exorcisms merely a mental delusion? Or does a demon truly attack a person? Eyewitnesses report that possessions do occur.