243 - The Pope's Exorcist

This ain't your grandma's exorcist. It's the POPE's exorcist! Russell Crowe plays the very real exorcist Father Gabriel Amorth in this very not real exorcism tale of 2023's The Pope's Exorcist. After Father Amorth (Crowe) conducts a "fake" exorcism on a troubled young man by tricking the demon into a pig and shooting it (at least it wasn't 2,000 of them) he is sent back to the Vatican to be reprimanded for conducting an unsanctioned exorcism. Tightwad Cardinal Sullivan (Ryan O'Grady) reprimands him for being a loose cannon, for being too cool, etc. But then the pope (Franco Nero) sends Amorth on a new mission, should he choose to accept, to Spain to investigate a new possession in a little boy. Julia (Alexandra Essoe) arrives at a Spanish abbey with her daughter Amy (Laurel Marsden) and her young son Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) left to her by her late husband. She's going to fix it up and sell it to… a church? An abbey enthusiast? In any case, that plan is disrupted when her son starts acting all possessed and weird. Ever seen The Exorcist? Ya know how demons are always carving words into their body, spider-walking, saying sexually inappropriate things, and so on? Well it's that. Amorth arrives and teams up with the local Father Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto) to exorcise this powerful demon. It turns out the demon possessed the dude who started the Spanish Inquisition, conveniently letting the Catholic Church off the hook on that one. Can Amorth and Esquibel save this boy and destroy this demon? Do they have dark elements of their pasts the demon can exploit? Does a Vespa scooter really have enough horsepower to rip off the cover of a centuries-old catacomb? You'll have to listen to find out.