A Brooklyn
nun's confession in a bogus rape case has opened a window on a shadowy
sect that broke from the Catholic Church decades ago and has been called
a cult.
The Quebec-based Apostles of Infinite Love has run the East Flatbush
convent since 1984 - and the nuns strike an odd presence in the
neighborhood as they periodically emerge to walk the streets single file
in their blue habits.
"We are a begging order. We go door to door for donations," said
Sister Lydwina, the order's mother superior. "It's a hard life, but
providence has managed to help us."
The group - which has no affiliation with the Catholic Church - has up to 500 members in Canada, the U.S. and South and Central America.
There are just seven or eight in the Brooklyn home.
Among them was a 26-year-old French Canadian novice, Mary Turcotte,
who had been working as a cook for about a month when she made the
shocking claim that a towering black man raped her in a snow bank.
She later admitted she'd made up the story as cover for a consensual
romp that also might have been fiction, sources said. She was not
charged.
"She was a troubled girl," Lydwina said. "We sent her back to her family in Quebec."
The Turcottes are one of several large families that live in the Apostles' sprawling rural compound in the mountains north of Montreal, former members of the order said.
"[She] grew up in the order. Her parents still live in the compound,"
said a woman who has fled the group. "My guess is that she, the same as
I, figured out that she wants more than this life."
The ex-member, like others who spoke with the Daily News, demanded
anonymity out of fear she would be cut off from relatives still in the
sect.
The group has its origins in France, where a Catholic priest named Michel Collin declared himself Pope Clement in 1950 and was defrocked.
In 1961, he joined forces with a French Canadian named Jean-Gaston Tremblay, who had founded a monastery in Quebec. When Collin died, Tremblay became leader, calling himself Pope Gregory.
Preaching an isolationist and apocalyptic vision, Tremblay attracted a small following among Catholics unhappy with Vatican II reforms.
"They were saying the end of the world was coming and true days of
darkness were coming and we had so many hours and days to join," said Joseph Daeges, 43, who fled in 1998 after 30 years of Apostles membership.
"This group was targeting people who didn't like the changes going on
around them," said another former member. "What's the easiest thing to
do at a time of change? Go back to tradition."
At its peak, the group had as many as 900 followers. Members cut
themselves off from the outside world and focused on farming and
publishing religious texts.
"No phones, no TV, magazines, nothing," the former member said.
"People gave up their worldly possessions to the Apostles, so that's
where their properties and some money came from."
Children were separated from their parents and boys and girls lived apart.
"The boys became priests; the girls nuns," the former member said.
"They thought they had a choice but it was really brainwashing."
Some who fled complained of physical and sexual abuse.
That led
Canadian authorities to raid the compound and arrest Tremblay and other
church leaders in the late 1990s. The charges were later dropped.
Experts say the Apostles bear all the hallmarks of a cult.
"In my opinion, it is a very destructive cult," said Rick Ross,
a well-known cult deprogammer who has interviewed several former
members.
"It runs the whole gamut - physical abuse, psychological
coercion, financial control."
Officials at the monastery declined to discuss the order. "The
subject you wish to write about cannot be dealt with in a few lines or
paragraphs," it said in a statement.
As its members have died off, the group has dwindled in numbers.
Tremblay, now 82, is in poor health and no longer runs day-to-day
operations, the former members said.