The Rev. Carlos Martins cohosts a popular podcast about exorcisms and, in 2024, wrote what he hoped would be a bestseller about the practice.
But that was before he was accused of not being an exorcist at all.
Kyle Clement, a longtime aide of another prominent exorcist, said he wasn't aware of any records showing Martins had ever performed an exorcism.
“(He) is not who he says he is,” Clement said during a “Jesus 911” podcast in 2024. “The problem that I’ve got with Father Carlos Martins is he’s opining and talking about things he does not know.”
In November, Martins filed a defamation lawsuit against Clement and Jesus Romero, who hosted the podcast and also questioned Martins' credentials to expel malevolence from a person.
Clement and Romero are followers of the Rev. Chad Ripperger of Keenesburg, Colorado, one of the leading exorcists in the United States. Ripperger didn't appear on the podcast and wasn't named in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit, said Martins wasn’t required to file records of his exorcisms. It described the defendants as competitors who sought to hurt the sales of his book, “The Exorcist Files.”
Clement and Romero declined to comment, but their lawyer defended their actions. Attorney Bill Burdett said the men were giving their opinions about a religious matter and, therefore, were protected by the First Amendment.
“Determining whether Fr. Martin is authorized to perform exorcisms turns entirely on the interpretation and application of Catholic faith,” Burdett wrote in a pleading in the lawsuit.
Burdett declined to be interviewed for this article.
Growth in exorcists
People might be shocked to learn how many exorcists walk among them. Once common during medieval times, they’re enjoying a renaissance in the Catholic church.
The growth began with a decree by Pope John Paul II in 1999 that every diocese should have an exorcist, said Andrew Chesnut, chair of Catholic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. The pontiff was worried about growing paganism in the world.
The United States, which has 197 Catholic dioceses, had a dozen exorcists in 2005, according to various estimates. Today it has 180, Chesnut said.
“The great majority of Americans would definitely be surprised there are approximately 180 Catholic exorcists in the U.S.,” he said.
Despite the growth, exorcisms still aren’t common.
Before performing one, priests are required to rule out other possible causes of a person’s possessive-like behavior, according to church guidelines. The subjects undergo medical and psychiatric evaluations, which is where most cases end.
When an exorcism is performed, it rarely conjures the foreboding bedroom in the 1973 movie, “The Exorcist,” said religious scholars. Most occur in a church office, with the subject seated in a chair. Some are done over a cellphone.
But they sometimes involve supernatural acts that occurred in the movie: displays of inordinate strength, speaking in languages one never learned, an intolerance of sacred objects and even levitation, exorcists said.
A priest first, exorcist second
Martins never thought he would be an exorcist. Then again, he never thought he would be a priest. He was an atheist while attending the University of Waterloo in the Canadian province of Ontario.
He met a group of Catholic students there whose faith seemed to make them uncommonly tranquil, he said during a 2024 podcast, “Capturing Christianity.”
He found himself drawn to the group and accompanied them on a religious retreat, which eventually began his metamorphosis from nonbeliever to believer.
Martins, 51, said he didn’t have to wait long for his first exorcism.
Shortly after his ordination in 2003, he was assigned to a parish in Houston that was responsible for all the exorcisms in the archdiocese and surrounding archdioceses, he told a podcaster.
Three local priests were so busy casting out il diavolo that they farmed out minor exorcisms, such as for haunted buildings, to the young deacon Martins.
He quickly felt like he had a knack for it.
“I think it was an intuition that I always had, or that it was a kind of grace given by God in the moment,” Martins told MailOnline during a 2024 interview.
Martins’ main vocation with the church isn’t exorcism. It’s the display of sacred relics, which are physical objects associated with saints such as their remains, possessions or items that once touched their bodies.
Martins travels around the world lecturing about the saints whose objects he brought with him.
During his travels with the relics, he sometimes performs exorcisms for churches that lack an exorcist, he said.
“One of the things that kind of comes easy to me is speaking and teaching and just engaging people on the truths of the faith,” he said in November during a Catholic podcast, “Godsplaining.”
Levitating chairs 'gets old'
Martins said he is asked to teach priests in the United States and other countries about exorcisms.
In 2023, the Vatican wanted him to mount a campaign to dispel some of the myths about the practice, he said during a 2023 podcast by the Catholic Vote advocacy group. The first step was creating a podcast about the ritual.
Martins is the co-creator and co-host of “The Exorcist Files,” which uses actors to reenact the priest’s exorcisms while he provides commentary. The music and performances are ominous.
"When you see a chair levitate for the 83rd time, it gets old," Martins said in a July 2024 trailer for season two of the podcast.
"But confronting the mind of the Devil, the source of every perversion, every sin, every wickedness, every bad thing, that's scary."
The podcast, available on Apple and Spotify, has been downloaded 4 million times and is among the most popular spiritual podcasts in the U.S., according to its website.
Martins wrote in the book, “The Exorcist Files,” which describes some of the cases from the program, that what he loves most about exorcisms is that they allow him to help Christ rescue lost souls.
“What could be more fulfilling than giving Jesus what He wants?” he wrote. “I do find this ministry a blessing and immensely meaningful.”
Questioning the exorcist's street cred
Clement and Romero questioned Martins’ legitimacy during three “Jesus 911” podcasts in November and December 2024.
Clement is a case manager for Liber Christo, a Denver group that provides training in exorcisms for clergy and laity. During the podcasts, Clement knew just about every exorcist in the U.S., but Martins’ name had never crossed his desk.
The Catholic church breaks exorcists into two categories. One is a permanent position, while the other is temporarily appointed for individual cases. The temporary appointments must be approved by the local bishop. Martins’ lawsuit said he is in the latter group.
Clement said during the podcasts that appointments are documented and recorded, but that there are no documents for Martins, according to the lawsuit. He suggested the priest only heard confessions but never performed exorcisms.
“When he tells a story of experiences when he was an exorcist, that title simply is not, he doesn’t have that credential canonically,” Clement said. “And so he’s using the term in a non-canonical way.”
The three podcasts where Clement and Romero discussed Martins have been removed from streaming services.
Martins’ lawsuit said he received permission for his exorcisms, but it wasn’t mandatory to keep records of them.
In August 2024, Romero emailed Martins to say he was aware of the priest’s work with relics but didn’t know anything about his experience as an exorcist, according to the lawsuit. He asked when Martins became an exorcist, which bishop bequeathed the title and in what diocese.
Romero said, as a podcast host, he had received numerous questions about Martins’ status as an exorcist and wanted to be able to answer listeners’ queries.
In a terse reply, Martins ignored Romero's questions and said listeners should contact him through his relics’ group, Treasures of the Church, according to the lawsuit.
Romero then contacted Martins’ religious order in Ottawa, Ontario, Companions of the Cross, and posed the same questions. The Rev. Roger Vandenakker, general superior of the order, gave the following response.
“Fr. Carlos has not been appointed as an exorcist by a particular diocese. His full-time ministry is Treasures of the Church; however, due to his travels, he has been involved in exorcisms with the appropriate permission and or the request of the corresponding bishop.”
When Romero described the response during the 2024 podcast, he read only the first half, stopping at “Church,” according to the lawsuit.
“I just don’t understand why he’s purporting to be an exorcist when his order says he’s not,” Romero said during the podcast.
Dismissing temporary exorcists
Looming just outside the lawsuit is Ripperger, the prominent exorcist.
He founded the Society of the Most Sorrowful Mother, a Keenesburg, Colo., group of exorcists, and developed Liber Christo, whose training is based on his teachings. He’s a prolific speaker and writer about exorcism.
Amid the three podcasts where Martins was criticized by Romero and Clement, Ripperger, 61, appeared on a separate Romero podcast, “The Terry and Jesse Show.”
Without mentioning Martins by name, Ripperger said he didn’t consider priests who are temporarily appointed to perform exorcisms to be an exorcist.
“You’re only an exorcist during the time you’re doing the exorcism, but it ends with the exorcism,” he said.
Ripperger declined to be interviewed for this article.
As for Martins’ book, “The Exorcist Files” ranks 37,641 on Amazon's top sellers list.
The lawsuit said the alleged slander by Romero and Clement hurt book sales and caused Martins’ weekly podcasts about exorcism to lose listeners and advertisers.
The priest had hoped for something better.
During the Catholic Vote podcast in 2023, Martins said he worked on the book for several years and had his material reviewed by 25 exorcists, psychiatrists, psychologists, theologians and philosophers.
“That book, if I do say so, it’s the greatest work that I’ve ever done,” Martins said.