admin
The Herald, October 6, 1994
AT LEAST 50 people believed to be members of an apocalyptic Canadian based religious sect, the Order of the Solar Temple, were found dead in burned-out homes in Switzerland and Quebec in what police yesterday said appeared to be a grisly mass suicide.
Police in Switzerland said they had found 48 bodies in a burnt-out mountain farmhouse and two chalets. Two bodies were also found in a building in Morin Heights, close to Montreal, owned by cult founder Luc Jouret (46), police in Canada said.
The authorities said the death toll might rise when a third chalet, feared to be booby trapped, had been searched.
Some of the victims, who included children and a teenager, died from bullet wounds to the head and many had plastic bags around their heads, fire-fighters returning from the Cheiry farm house reported.
Mr Pierre Nidegger, the police chief in Fribourg, said the authorities hoped that an audio tape found stuck to the door of the farm would shed more light on the motive for the suicide.
“It appears to be a collective suicide carried out by a sect,” Mr Nidegger said.
“They probably died on Tuesday afternoon.”
It is not known if the 46-year-old Swiss-born cult leader Jouret was one of the dead.
Autopsies were being carried out on the two badly charred bodies found in Canada yesterday and police warned that identification could take several days. – Ziana-AFP.
LESSONS FOR TODAY
A sect is a religious group that is a subset of a religion or denomination. Sects typically share the same beliefs as the religion that is their foundation, but will have marked differences in some areas.
Sects and cults are words that are often used interchangeably although this is wrong. Cults are small, extreme groups, and are often marked by corrupt leaders with intense, manipulative, or unethical practices. Sects are not cults, in most circumstances. They are just religious offshoots of other groups. But because of how often the two terms are confused, many people who belong to sects describe themselves as being part of a small denomination, to avoid negative stigma.
In the past several decades, there have been thousands of deaths through either through murders, suicides, or standoffs with the government that have ended tragically. The latest deaths attributed to a cult was reported in Kenya where more than 400 members of doomsday cult died after their pastor ordered them to fast to death in order to meet Jesus.
Online Reporter