ICSA TODAY 34
Correspondents
,
Reports
Report From Poland
Piotr T. Nowakowski
On July 14, 2018, the Polish edition
of the Catholic news and information
portal Aleteia published an article
titled “Let’s not scare youth with cults.
Let’s teach them critical thinking,
including about the Church” (Nie
straszmy młodych sektami. Nauczmy ich
krytycznego myślenia, także o Kościele).
The author, Jola Szymańska, refers
to the experiences of the Dominican
Centre of Information on New Religious
Movements and Cults in Wrocław,
whose director, Fr. Paweł Adamik OP,
describes the problematic experiences
people tell them about. In addition to
their experiencing personal anxiety and
treating religious belief as a magical
experience, he describes practices
such as fortunetelling, holding fringe
medical beliefs, and becoming involved
in cults.
The article gives the definition of a cult,
and also the example of the Peoples
Temple and then Fr. Adamik urges
readers not to frighten young people
with warnings about cults. He says,
What may help is talking about
one’s own crises and difficulties,
explaining that they are present
in our lives and yet we keep on
going. Reflection. Critical thinking.
Teaching how to live a good life,
building good relationships,
experiencing not only proud
moments but also difficult ones.
All these because awareness will
help us more than scaring people
with statistics.1
He adds that a Catholic community
may become a cult, as well, and
indicates the traits that should
concern us, such as being closed to
outside contact pretending to have a
noble ideology and showing its true,
self-serving purpose only once the
recruit is drawn in demonstrating
a lack of collaboration and even
personal relations with other groups
or priests pursuing total involvement
of its members in its activities
interfering with family relations
having a disproportionate focus on
the uniqueness of the community
insisting on radical obedience to its
leader showing a lack of openness
to dialogue, and suggesting that the
community is the best, if not the only,
way to salvation.
Report From Spain and
Latin America
Luis Santamaria
Translated by John Paul Lennon
This year, two Catholic-priest cult
experts passed away. Both were
members of Ibero-American Cultic
Studies [RIES, Spanish acronym]. On
July 1, Fr. Flaviano Amatulli Valenti, of
Italian origin, died in San Andrés Tuxtla
(Veracruz, Mexico). He had founded
the Apóstoles de la Palabra Catholic
movement, one of whose goals was to
limit cult influence. On June 22, Fr. José
Luis Sánchez Nogales, PhD (Philosophy
and Theology), Chair of the Granada
Faculty of Theology, and author of La
nostalgia del eterno, Sectas y religiosidad
alternativa and Religión, religiosidad
alternative y sectas (Nostalgia of the
Eternal: Sects and Alternative Religiosity),
passed away in Almería, Spain.
Groups of Christian Origin
In March, the Brazilian Ministry of
Labor found 565 people in farmhouses
working in conditions of slavery,
and also 438 without work contracts
and 32 underage laborers. All were
members of a group called Comunidad
Evangélica Jesús, la Verdad que Marca
(The Evangelical Community of Jesus,
the Marking Truth).
The movie Nada que perder (Nothing
to Lose), which tells the life story of
Brazilian millionaire Edir Macedo,
founder and leader of the Iglesia
Universal del Reino de Dios (The
Universal Church of the Kingdom of
God), has been shown during the past
few months in several Latin American
countries. In Argentina, some people

35 VOLUME 9 |ISSUE 3 |2018 ||
protested in May that the children of a
certain school were tricked into going
to see the movie. It is also alleged that
on some occasions the sect bought
all the tickets to the movie to give the
impression it was sold out.
On June 10, Gregory XVIII, ex–pope of
the Palmar de Troya Christian Church
(separated from Rome and with its
own pope), together with his wife,
were hospitalized for stab wounds
they suffered when attempting to steal
objects from the sect’s basilica. They
are both now incarcerated. The sect’s
former third pope had left the sect in
2016, claiming it was “a hoax.”
Groups of Asian Origin
The Ministry of Education for the
Neuquén Province in Argentina signed
an agreement in April with the Latin
American leader of the Fundación
El Arte de Vivir (The Art of Living
Foundation) to teach the meditation
techniques of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in
public schools.
Esoteric groups
On July 4, the Peruvian police detained
Felix Steven Manrique, guru of a small
gnostic group, in the San Martín de
Pengoa jungle. Accompanying “Prince
Gurdjieff” were two women and their
small children. In a nearby house,
Patricia Aguilar, a young Spanish
woman who disappeared in January
2017, was found taking care of the
one-month-old baby she had with
the guru with her were other children
from the sect, poorly nourished and
unschooled. The rescue operation was
carried out thanks to the insistence of
the family of the Spanish girl, who had
been recruited and indoctrinated on
the Internet by the cult leader since she
was 16.
New Age and Shamanism
Several ex-followers and people
otherwise affected by Spaniard Carlos
Herranz, who goes by the various
names of Lama Losel in his Buddhist
version, Swami Premananda in his
Hindu identity, or more recently Arif,
have complained about the cultic
functioning of his group. Presently he is
under investigation in Spain, although
he continues to remain publicly active,
promoting activities such as Tibetan-
bowl concerts.
In May a Peruvian shaman was detained
in Spain, accused of sexually abusing a
woman who had taken part in a native
ayahuasca ritual. This happened in
Navarra province, where the victim had
to be hospitalized for an episode of
hallucinations after she consumed the
illegal substance.
Peru’s Amazon jungle region continues
to receive tourists from various
countries who want to take part in
shamanic rituals that use ayahuasca,
an infusion of plants that provokes
altered states of consciousness. Despite
numerous deaths reported recently due
to ayahuasca use, the Associated Press
states that there is an increase in these
New Age therapeutic activities. n
Correspondents
,
Reports
Note
[1] See https://pl.aleteia.org/2018/07/14/
nie-straszmy-mlodych-sektami-
nauczmy-ich-krytycznego-myslenia-
takze-o-kosciele/