Interview Biographies

Matt Baglio was born and raised in San Diego, California. In 1996, he graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a B.A. in English Literature. After a stint working as an intern and editorial assistant for TransWorld SNOWboarding magazine, Baglio moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a freelancer.

In 2000, in an effort to expand his horizons, Baglio took a trip to Europe where he met his future wife in Rome. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Italy full time, and over the years has worked for a variety of news organizations and magazines, including The Associated Press, The American Magazine, The Snowboard Journal, COLORS, Bene, and Homeland Security Today, as well as a host of others.

Baglio's interests are varied, and his work has exposed him to topics as diverse as Vatican politics, anti-mafia police, the Olympics, and satanic cults. Currently, he lives in Rome with his wife and son. The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist is his first book.

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For the last four years, Father Gary Thomas has served at the Sacred Heart parish in Saratoga, Calif., a bucolic suburb of San Jose. But the 53-year-old Roman Catholic priest is also one of about 14 Vatican-certified exorcists working in the U.S. and the real-life counterpart to the character played by newcomer Colin O'Donoghue in the New Line Cinema film The Rite starring Anthony Hopkins. Thomas became certified to practice exorcisms after completing 40 hours of study at the Vatican's Athenaeum Pontificium Regina Apostolorum in Rome. During his time there, he met a fellow student, journalist Matt Baglio, who ended up chronicling Father Gary's journey in the book "The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist," which served as the basis for the film. Thomas spent a week on the set of the movie, serving as an advisor to the film from director Mikael Hafstrom. He drew on much of the personal experience for the consulting job; in the last four years, he has seen about 100 people who felt that they were possessed by the devil. (Courtesy the Los Angeles Times)

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Fr. Gabriele Amorth is an Italian Roman Catholic priest and an exorcist of the Diocese of Rome. Fr. Amorth was born in Modena, Emilia. He was ordained a Roman Catholic Priest in 1954 and became an official exorcist in June 1986, under the tutelage of Candido Amantini. He is a member of the Society of St. Paul, the Congregation founded by James Alberione in 1914. In 1990, he founded the International Association of Exorcists and was president until he retired, at 75, in the year 2000. He is now honorary president for life of the association. Fr. Amorth authored two books specifically on exorcism. The two books "An Exorcist Tells His Story" and "An Exorcist: More Stories" are not official Roman Catholic documents, rather personal accounts of his office as Exorcist. The books use witness accounts and personal experience as evidence. Fr . Amorth's favorite film is The Exorcist. He thinks that it is substantially exact and based on a true story, although the special effects are exaggerated. He thinks that people should see it so that they would "know what we do". During an interview, he stated that he never performs exorcisms on people who claim they are possessed without being so, and that he always sends people to see psychiatrists and psychologists before agreeing to perform an exorcism.

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Richard E. Gallagher, M.D., a board certified psychiatrist, is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at New York Medical College and also on the faculties of the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Institute and St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Seminary in Dunwoodie, New York.  He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton University, magna cum laude in Classics, and trained in Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine.  In addition, he is in private practice in Hawthorne, N.Y.

Dr. Gallagher is the only American psychiatrist to have been a continuing U. S. delegate to the International Association of Exorcists, has addressed its plenary session twice, and was appointed to its governing council in 2008. He has collaborated with many Catholic priests, rabbis and Protestant ministers and numerous mental health professionals in the subject area of this paper over the last twenty five years.

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José Antonio Fortea Cucurull is a Spanish writer and calligrapher, and a Roman Catholic priest and exorcist of the diocese of Alcalá de Henares in Madrid. Prior to his priesthood he studied at the University of Navarre where he obtained a bachelor's degree in Theology. In 1998 he subsequently received a S.T.L. degree in History of the Church at the Faculty of Theology of the Comillas Pontifical University. For the licentiate he defended his thesis entitled Exorcism in the Present Age under the direction of the Secretary of the Commission for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Spain Conference of Catholic Bishops.

He is a member of the clergy in the diocese of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). He combines his work as a theologian with his activity as pastor of Saint Mary Magdalene Parish, in Anchuelo, Madrid.

Author of several books about Demonology, demonic possession and exorcism, every year he gives lectures in dioceses and universities around the World. He carries out his ministry of praying for persons who claim to be afflicted by the Devil in Our Lady of Zulema Parish in the diocese of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid, Spain). Because of the lack of exorcists, cases come all around the nation and other countries to his church and with a general permission of his bishop he prays for them.