What Does a Chief Exorcist Read? Inside Fr. Jocis Syquia’s Bookshelf

The crucifixes, Marian images, statues, and other religious artifacts in chief exorcist Father Jose Francisco “Jocis” Syquia’s office tell you where you are. The books, however, offer a more unexpected inventory: Hauntings by Paul Roland, Susan Greenwood’s The Encyclopedia of Magic and Witchcraft, and Gerald Brittle’s The Demonologist share the shelves with Catholic devotional works and, of course, the Bible. The collection reflects the territory Syquia works in every day, where questions about the supernatural arrive alongside questions about the mind.

Look closer, and the range widens. Kaplan and Sadock’s Synopsis of Psychiatry and David D. Burns When Panic Attacks sit alongside The Idiot’s Guide to Conquering Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. 

Syquia has a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Santo Tomas Graduate School and has also studied sacred and spiritual theology. That training is reflected in how clinical reference works appear beside books on spiritual warfare. We recently interviewed him for our November issue, publishing the full profile here. But beyond his professional background, his personal reading list offers another perspective on the work he does and the ideas that inform it.

When asked where readers should begin with the ministry of exorcism, Syquia points to the late Italian priest and legendary exorcist Gabriele Amorth. “The first book I read was by Father Amorth,” he says. “That gets you started because it explains the foundation of these issues and the situation of the Church regarding the ministry.” Amorth’s work gave Syquia an introduction to the Church’s understanding of exorcism before he went deeper into the practice and its cases.

Other titles bear Syquia’s own name, including Exorcism: Encounters with the Paranormal and the Occult. He also edited The Exorcist Files, a collection of interviews by Joy L. Cuadrante. In the interview, Syquia observes that few FilipinoFilipinoThe national language of the Philippines, widely used for communication, education, media, and culture.Go to Filipino Glossary exorcists have published books and recommends learning the Church’s broader ministry before moving into the Philippine context. Elsewhere on the shelves are The Glories of Mary by Alphonsus Liguori, Guadalupe: What Her Eyes Say by Francis Anson, and Christianity and the Celts by Ted Olsen.

Syquia also describes how the cases exorcists encounter can vary by place. Urban cases, for instance, may involve New Age practices, fortune-telling, or psychic healers, while provincial cases may involve espiritistas or mangkukulam. At conferences, he says, exorcists compare those regional differences while sharing the patterns they recognize across cases.

At the heart of the shelf, the Bible anchors the rest. Read together, the titles sketch the discipline his work demands, combining theological grounding with an understanding of the psychological realities that can shape distress. In Syquia’s office, the reading list follows the same route as the work itself, from questions and symptoms toward discernment and care.