The Pope's Fraudulent Exorcist.

Father Gabriele Amorth (1925-2016) was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1954, and served as an Exorcist of the Diocese of Rome from June 1986, at first under the supervision of Candido Amantini, and subsequently as Chief Exorcist of the Diocese (the 'Pope's Exorcist'). He has been portrayed by the actor Russell Crowe in the film, The Pope's Exorcist (2023). Amorth, with five other Catholic priests, co-founded the Associazione internazionale degli esorcisti, the International Association of Exorcists, in 1990, and it was formally recognised by the Roman Catholic Church in 2014.

Besides claiming, inter alia, that yoga and the Harry Potter books are the work of the Devil, and that participating in the former and reading the latter will result in eternal damnation for those doing so, the late Father Amorth claimed to have performed no fewer than 160,000 exorcisms during the course of his career. This claim was made in May 2013, according to the Huffington Post (Friday, 31st May, 2013).

160,000 exorcisms in 27 years is ~5,926 exorcisms per year, or ~114 per week, or 16.2857 exorcisms per day.

Assuming that only one exorcism per hour is possible, Father Amorth would have had to work 16-hour days every day, with no breaks, for 27 years, for his alleged feat of performing 160,000 exorcisms during that time to be remotely feasible. He would have had no time to perform any of the other functions of a Catholic priest, such as saying Mass and the offices of the Breviary daily, during all that time. There would also have had to be a very large number of demons for him to cast out, and - by his published accounts - they seem to have enjoyed their encounters with him.

It is rather more likely that his claims are wildly exaggerated, if not wholly fictitious.

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