-Caveat Lector-
I wonder what fuzzy-headed "New Agers" did to commemorate June 9, 1969.
Australian Police See Risk Of Cult Mass Suicide
By Diana Taylor
BRISBANE (Reuters) - Police are monitoring a religious sect in the Australian
state of Queensland amid rumors it is preparing a Jonestown-style mass
suicide, a spokesman said Friday.
Sect leader Debra Geileskey has written in a published diary that she had a
vision revealing she would be dragged from a wooden two-story building, tied
to a pile of sticks and set on fire by a priest on September 9.
Friday, she denied that she had any plans to initiate violent deaths, saying
her vision had been misinterpreted.
Queensland police spokesman Brian Swift told Reuters: ``We are aware of the
rumors and have put contingency plans in place in case there are any problems
on that day.''
In 1978, Jim Jones, a U.S. pastor, led hundreds of his followers to their
deaths at Jonestown, Guyana, by drinking a cyanide-laced fruit drink.
Queensland Catholic priest Father John Ryan said police had sought permission
to set up a command post in the church hall next door to the building used by
the group in Helidon, near Brisbane.
September 9 -- 9.9.99. -- has attracted both practical and religious cult
attention worldwide, in part because of the implications for computers and
the so-called Millennium bug. Four nines were used as a cut-off code in some
older computer programs.
Geileskey's sect, the Magnificat Meal Movement, broke away from the Catholic
Church three years ago after she said she had received visions and prophecies
from angels and the Virgin Mary.
Its name refers to the Magnificat, a prayer attributed to the Virgin Mary,
and to the symbolic meal of the Eucharist.
In her latest newsletter, published on her Web site, Geileskey compares
herself to the French saint Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake as a
heretic in the 15th century and later canonized.
``She (Geileskey) has made public statements to the community that she would
die on that day and that others would be martyred with her,'' said Michelle
Stewart, director of the company Our Lady's Mount Pty Ltd, which owns the
sect's headquarters building.
Geileskey said she would be celebrating the September 8 festival of the
birthday of the mother of Christ that week.
``The Catholic Church and others want to create as much fraud and lies about
me as they can to discredit us and stop our work,'' Geileskey told Reuters.
``These rumors are absolutely not true.''
Catholic Bishop William Morris has urged churchgoers in an open letter to
avoid the sect, which Geileskey said had branches in 73 countries and a
following of five million people.
Father Ryan said the sect in Helidon comprised about 50 families and was
decreasing in numbers.
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