In the Roman Catholic world, he said, people turn far too readily to exorcists out of desperation when medicines and other therapies don't seem to work.

And in Italy, superstition remains a powerful force. An estimated 10 million Italians — 17% of the population — use the services of fortune-tellers, faith healers and magicians who cast evil spells, according to a 2002 study by the Eurispes research institute. They pay nearly $6 billion a year to about 22,000 purveyors of such wizardry, Eurispes said.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the archbishop of Genoa, said a society bereft of values and moral codes is creating a fertile field for evil in the world.

Bertone recently set up a task force of exorcists and doctors to handle the overload of troubled Italians seeking the church's help, some of them possessed and some of them just "disturbed."

"The devil is real, he is at work, and he is agitating," Bertone said in an interview.

Doctors have proved an important asset in assessing the state of mind of potential patients, Bertone said. Surprisingly (or not), the practice of exorcism gets some endorsement from Italy's medical establishment.

Salvatore DiSalvo, a psychiatrist in the city of Turin, has been counseling priests in how to recognize the symptoms of schizophrenia and other mental disorders. He sees a valuable role for the exorcist.

"Science can't explain everything," he said. "I believe the exorcist is the last resort."