If you ever saw the entire Exorcist movie-unlikely since we all squeezed our eyes shut in fear most of the time-you would have seen elements of a very real ritual performed by priests of the world’s most powerful religion-Roman Catholicism.

Much of the horror we felt, of course, was the inexplicable things the girl-or the evil that possessed her-could do with her body and voice, and the power of the demon to command others.

But it was all illogical, the rational mind tried to make us believe. For to accept this as real, was to accept all the things we grew up being delightfully scared of-from the ghosts and goblins, to lagahoo and La Diablesse.

However, the holy men of the Roman Catholic Church accept the spiritual realm as fact.

And there are at least three Roman Catholic priests in Trinidad, schooled in the ancient teachings of The Roman Ritual, and prepared for the epic God vs Satan battle to remove from the body of a believer, the evil which may dwell within.

American priest Fr Clifford Graham is one of the exorcists. He is based at a church presbytery in rural Coryal Village, near Sangre Grande. Graham has written extensively about The Roman Ritual.

Exorcists too are Frs Neil Rodriguez, Vincent Compton, and Reginald Hezekiah. They have always declined to describe a personal experience with the possessed.

Former Catholic bishop John Mendes, who died recently, was the famed priest known to have performed several exorcisms locally. He took his secrets to the grave.

Mendes succeeded Dom Leo van Leuween, who passed on in 1983.

But it is through a devotee and confidante, businesswoman Seemoy Attong, details of one of his exorcisms have emerged.

So momentous was the day, that Attong remembers it with clarity.

The demon, she said, had possessed the body of a 15-year-old girl from Arouca.

The evil was the work of an Obeahman who had done the deed on behalf of a family jealous that the girl, a college pupil, was doing better in school that their child.

Attong remembers ’the parents found that their child was not the child they knew. She was doing all kinds of wrong things and there were sweeping pains over her body. So they carried her to Fr Leo.’

Said Attong ’they didn’t tell the girl where they were going. Along the way, the person inside the girl was telling the driver, ’I am fed up being in this child. This child is not worth the while. Carry me where I can be free’.’

The exorcism, said Attong, was carried out at the Catholic church in Mon Repos, San Fernando.

Attong said, ’I heard Fr Leo talking to the spirit and the spirit telling him that they had put him in the child. The thing did disappear because it wanted to go to rest. When I got there, the child appeared pale and like a dead person. But when she got up, she was okay. Fr Leo, when he came out of the room, was exhausted, wet with perspiration from head to foot, from his fight with the devil’.

Fr Leo, born in Holland, died at the San Fernando General Hospital at the age of 69.

Attong said he asked her to sprinkle his bottle of holy water on his body before he died, much like he would have done during the exorcism of the girl, as he held the crucifix and made his incantations in Latin. Attong has kept as her guard Fr Leo’s crucifix.