ROME — In a small room, well away from the street so that no one hears the screams, Father Gabriele Amorth does battle with Satan. He is a busy man.
As the Vatican's top exorcist, Amorth performs the mysterious, ancient ritual dozens of times a week. A confused world engulfed in tragedy and chaos is turning increasingly to black magic, the occult and fortune-telling, he said, proof that the devil and his handmaidens are having a field day.
"These customs open the door to evil spirits and to demonic possessions," Amorth said. "Exorcism is God's true miracle."
The practice of exorcism -- driving demons and evil spirits from people or places -- has been experiencing a renaissance of late, from Europe to the Americas to Africa.
In part, the rite owes its popularity to people's need to believe that the devil is real, philosophers say, and that it is possible to get rid of him.
In Italy, the number of exorcists has increased more than tenfold in the last decade to about 300. This year, one of the country's largest archdioceses established a special task force to handle the growing demand for devil detox.
Amorth is arguably the world's most famous practitioner of exorcism and certainly its greatest promoter.
He co-founded the International Assn. of Exorcists, an organization of priests that meets in secrecy every two years, and he remains its president emeritus. Author of numerous books on the subject, he has had a hand in recruiting, training or inspiring most of today's exorcists.
Amorth said his calendar is always full. "I have three this afternoon," he said matter-of-factly recently.
With little prompting, he whipped out his equipment, sheathed in a weathered leather bag that is always at his side: a silver and wooden crucifix, an aspergillum for sprinkling holy water and a container of baptismal oil.
He acted out simple steps from the ritual, wrapping his purple priest's stole around the shoulders of a visitor and making the sign of the cross on her forehead. (All clear, he pronounced.)
In an exorcism, that opening is followed by prayers, anointment with the holy water and oil, then a demand to the devil that he state his name and be gone. Anything can happen: If the person is possessed, and that's a rarity, he or she will often turn violent and fight the intervention, Amorth said.
"I've never been afraid of the devil," Amorth said. "In fact, I can say he is often scared of me."
