The Pope’s Exorcist was a surprise hit when it was released early in 2023, but the entertaining horror movie, starring Russell Crowe, was just the latest in an endless string of glossy exorcism tales churned out by filmmakers over the decades.

Public interest in the process of exorcisms first skyrocketed when director William Friedkin and writer William Peter Blatty launched The Exorcist upon an unsuspecting world back in 1973, having based the iconic film on Blatty’s novel. Friedkin admits that he was inspired to the point of obsession when he was making the movie, but it wasn’t until much later that he decided to meet the most famous real life exorcist of all, Father Gabriele Amorth, who had not only seen The Exorcist, but surprisingly championed it.

“Of course, the special effects are exaggerated,” Amorth told The Sunday Telegraph. “But it is a good film, and substantially exact, based on...