From: Stig Agermose <stig.agermose@privat.dk>
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 02:57:06 +0200
Fwd Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 08:05:49 -0400
Subject: 'Venusians To Save Sect Before Doomsday October 24'


Source: Reuters via The Globe And Mail - Toronto

http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/front/RTGAM/20020904/wsect090=
4/Front/homeBN/breakingnews

Stig

***

No mass suicides, French guru insists

Reuters News Agency

Wednesday, September 04 -- Online Edition, Posted at 6:44 AM EST

**

Nantes, France =97 The guru of a tiny French doomsday sect under
police suicide watch said on Wednesday his group looked forward
to voyagers from Venus collecting them before the world ends on
October 24.

Arnaud Mussy, 36, denied any plans for a mass suicide,
dismissing parallels that police and the press have made between
his New Lighthouse sect and the Order of the Solar Temple cult.

That group was active in France, Canada and Switzerland and saw
64 members die in two collective suicides in 1994 and 1995.

Police in the Atlantic port city of Nantes have kept the six-
member New Lighthouse sect under surveillance since one member
committed suicide and two others attempted to after an earlier
deadline for the world's end passed on July 11.

"We're not suicidal at all," Mr. Mussy, standing at the door of
the sect's tightly shuttered house, told Europe 1 radio in his
first interview after days of rising media interest.

Asked if they were really waiting for extraterrestrials to sweep
them off to Venus next month, he replied: "Sure.

"It will be just like going to Angers or Lyon," he said,
referring to two French cities. "It's an exchange. They come to
us, so we should go to them. That's all."

Mr. Mussy, a public relations specialist who says he will be
Christ and his twin brother the pope in the new life they expect
to lead on Venus, denied pressuring the man who killed himself
in July and blamed the other death bids on a "chain reaction."

Europe 1 described Mr. Mussy as casual, suntanned and charming.

Police and justice authorities in Nantes say they cannot ban the
sect or break it up because it has done nothing wrong.

At least 30 tiny apocalyptic sects are active in France. Anti-
sect groups have kept up calls for official action before any
further New Lighthouse members attempt suicide.

"I'm afraid that these people are so weak that they could be
pushed to the same extremes as in July, especially when the non-
  event of October 24 passes," said Dominique Hubert of the anti-
sect group ADFI.

"I think we should act now before there are other catastrophes.
This is a case of failing to help people who are in danger."

Mr. Mussy's mother made a desperate appeal to her son on French
television on Monday. "I ask them to stop all this," the mother,
who was not identified, said. "These things have gone too far.
They could endanger other people's lives."

Police said they were alerted to the sect this year when
neighbours noted strange behaviour on a farm commune of 21
people. "At their meetings, they wore capes and held spiritual
seances," one officer said.

The sect lost many members when the world did not end in July as
Mr. Mussy had predicted. The remaining faithful later moved into
their current two-storey residence near Nantes university.

**

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