KAMPALA,Uganda (CNS): A tape recording of the Virgin Mary helped convert many to a Ugandan sect that apparently committed mass suicide.
At least 330 people died in a blaze in the church of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments on March 17. The doors of the church were locked and the windows had been nailed shut. The sect’s followers had been expecting the end of the world.
The sect leadership, which included a Catholic politician and two former Catholic priests, claimed to have received regular visitations from the Virgin Mary. The sceptical were converted using the tape recording.
Testimonies of claimed visitations from the Virgin Mary were also contained in a book the sect sold. The book contained several chapters opposed to Catholic doctrine.
In a statement issued on March 20, Bishop Robert Gay of Kabale said the sect’s followers had been ‘misled by obsessed leaders into a form of religiosity completely rejected by the Catholic Church’.
