Miracles. Exorcism. Catholic-bashing. Going for broke in the Universal Church.

by Joseph Treviño

Order and chaos outside the State Theater before the Friday night deliverance Photo by Slobodan Dimitrov

LAWEEKLY June 29 - July 5, 2001 THE DEMONS JUST won't let go. Dozens of people, tormented by the forces of evil, fill the aisles. Church officials clutch the hair of the possessed, their shoulders, their flailing arms, doing whatever it takes to break the spell. Some of the faithful crouch on the floor, coughing up bile on newspapers. The cavernous "temple" -- an architectural gem along downtown L.A.'s historic theater row -- fills with the roar and chanting of 3,000 men and women, as Bishop José Luiz bellows at the altar, directing the mass exorcisms. This is the Friday-night service of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, one of the best shows in town, where the bishop and his band of pastors battle the dark spirits that dare to mess with humanity.

What is going on here in the old State Theater on Broadway is no ordinary service. It's a raw blend of Christianity and witchcraft, and the top-selling spiritual hope for hundreds of thousands of Latino immigrants in the United States. In fact, the church's popularity is pumped up by the downright frightening nature of this spectacle, and by its firebrand allusions to the horror cinema so common in Mexico. The captivating combination of theology and culture threatens the staid Catholic Church both here and in Brazil. It is the work of a Rio de Janeiro lottery bureaucrat and former street preacher named Edir Macedo, who started the Pentecostal-style religion in 1977.

Twenty-four years later, the church claims to have 6 million mostly working-class members in 85 countries. They stuff the red collection bags with at least $1 billion per year in return for the spiritual care provided at storefront temples and converted movie houses. In Brazil, the church's influence extends beyond spiritual matters, into ownership of Brazil's Rede Record, the country's second-largest television network, and hundreds of radio stations, various newspapers, a bank and a credit company.

Along the way, Macedo has become a multimillionaire who draws criticism like the devout attract demons. A few years after he held his first service, in a tiny mortuary in Rio, unsubstantiated rumors began circulating about his multimillion-dollar international empire being little more than a giant money-laundering operation for the Colombian drug cartel. In 1996, the Brazilian press quoted Interpol official Romeu Tuma as saying that the U.S. Department of Justice had been asked to investigate the allegations; now, five years later, neither Interpol nor the U.S. Attorney's Office will comment on the matter. The unproven accusations of seedy drug connections have followed the church to Europe, where a 1997 report by the Belgian parliament claimed the church is out to defraud believers:

Photo by Slobodan Dimitrov

"This is an authentic crime organization whose only goal is to enrich itself. This is an extreme form of religious merchandizing."

Macedo has been relatively untouched by it all. In 1992, two years after the $45-million acquisition of the Rede Record, he was arrested on suspicion of fraud and quackery, and spent 11 days in jail, according to a Brazilian newpaper. The charges were later dropped. In an interview with Brazilian media, Macedo denied any wrongdoing: "If we were thieves, we would not have bought a TV station, radio stations, nothing. We would have pocketed the cash and traveled around the world."

Bishop Macedo Exorcises demons in Brazil on The Universal Church’s 20-year anniversary video

People are out to destroy the good work of the church, says Edward Campiani, a 41-year-old San Fernando member who worked as a church administrator in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. "The Universal Church has the power of God with it. It has helped thousands of gang members and drug addicts for whom the Catholic Church has done nothing." The Universal Church is well-known for its relentless fund-raising tactics. Rick Ross, an international cult expert, says Universal is the greediest religious group he has encountered. "It is the most aggressive collection of money I had ever seen in a church service, and I've been attending church services and observing groups for about 20 years," says Ross, who testified on behalf of an elderly Salvadoran woman who sued the church after falling and breaking her arm while in line for holy oil after an L.A. service. Members face not one or two offerings every service, but as many as three or more, with pastors exhorting them to donate as much as $1,000.

The church's lore is littered with tales of former members brought to financial doom by excessive giving.

In an early training film, the fiery and dynamic Macedo is shown slamming down a Bible as he counted piles of money, and telling pastors, "If they don't pay, they can get out." Macedo says he has matured since then.

 

ON THIS FRIDAY night, halfway into the service, the congregation is focused on the wide stage, where Bishop José Luiz is interviewing a weeping, middle-aged woman and her two daughters near the altar. They have been selected, in a process that is not entirely clear, to lead the group catharsis. The question-and-answer session grows in intensity as the bishop hones in on the demons within. The screaming dialogue sets the pace for the simultaneous exorcisms of several dozen other "possessed" members and visitors whose bodies wrench back and forth, and who are attended to in the aisles or at their seats by church officials, called obreros. Standing behind the mother is her youngest daughter, a beautiful 9-year-old girl with gleaming fair skin and dark hair. Her face contorted, the daughter again and again snaps at the bishop with a "Callate!" ("Shut up!"). Grasping the mother's head, the bishop commands the dark spirit inside her to reveal itself.

It turns out the woman's husband has been cheating on her. In a deep, strong voice, the spirit tells the mesmerized rows of faithful that it was introduced into the woman by a hex placed by the husband's lover. "I will destroy her and her family!" the spirit declares as the mother claws at the bishop.

Her demon is not the only one raging out of control. Directly in front of the stage, a burly man in his 20s, wearing a satin shirt and cowboy boots, pushes aside several obreros with his powerful arms. "Aaaaarghh," he growls as they pounce on him. Grunts, spasms and the hacking sounds of people spewing saliva mix in with the church servants' shouting "Sal!" ("Get out!"). The noise seems deafening. Facing the crowd, the bishop points at the possessed and yells into his microphone, "We will burn these demons." As the bishop and his pastors wrestle the mother and her daughters to the ground, the thousands in the seats shout their canticle: "¡Quema! ¡Quema! ¡QUEMA!" ("Burn! Burn! BURN!") Chaos reigns.

The whole ordeal lasts 20 minutes. Finally, as if by magic, all of those who were possessed -- including the mother and her children -- are silent and calm, their demons vanquished. Smiling, the mother assures the crowd she is better. Before, she confesses, she would abuse her children, but now they hug each other. The crowd applauds, and the young family disappears off the stage into the boisterous crowd.

FOR THE PAST six months, the Weekly has examined the Universal Church and its rapid growth in Southern California. This story is based on interviews with members, former members, and experts who have studied and written about the church, some of them reporters for the Brazilian media. It proved difficult to get the church's side of the story; Universal Church officials and ministers rarely grant interviews. At church headquarters in New York City, treasurer Regina Cerveira, speaking through her secretary, said no interviews would be granted to the Weekly. Much about the church remains secret, even for the faithful. Off-limit topics include finances of the church, its hierarchical structure, and even most of the surnames of many of the pastors and bishops. n the United States, the church's attention is focused on the thriving Latino communities. From the large Puerto Rican enclaves in New York City to the mostly

Long journey of the cleansed: Seized from the crowd, crawling down the ailse, into Macedo’s grip. From church video

Mexican and Central American immigrants in Southern California, the church feverishly pursues working-class converts.

The church has at least 20 temples in Southern California, with a new one opening every six months. Most are in heavily Latino areas, though temples have also opened in Azusa and on Hollywood Boulevard.

R. Andrew Chesnut, a Latin American studies assistant professor at the University of Houston, has studied the church in Brazil and the U.S., and traces the roots of its theology to Los Angeles. "Los Angeles is the birthplace of Pentecostalism," said Chesnut, who is the author of Born Again in Brazil. " From Los Angeles it was exported to Latin America and the rest of the world, in a decade. And now, in the beginning of the 21st century, it's coming back via Latin American missionaries."

Day after day, dozens of people claim to have been healed at church services and during Pare de Sufrir (Stop Suffering), a daily religious television program and a radio show broadcast that originate in Los Angeles. In heart-wrenching testimonies, converts swear the church saved them from a sure path of self-destruction. "The doctors told me that I had cancer and that I only had six more months to live," said Salvadora Villa. "Thanks to the Universal Church, I no longer have cancer and I am happier than ever before." UNFATHOMABLE DESPAIR HAD stolen every bit of Melanea Quiñones' desire to live. In a matter of months, she had been injured in a bus accident, gone through various stages of a divorce and seen her grown children move out of the house. Quiñones wanted to end her suffering. As she was about to jump off a freeway overpass, a friend managed to pull her to safety. Quiñones was trying to wrest free from her friend when police plucked her off the Boyle Heights bridge, in May 1993. She was held for examination at a psychiatric ward, then sent home. Several days later, as she walked aimlessly along Broadway Street, a billboard about Pastor Marco and his conversion to the Universal Church caught her eye outside the Million Dollar Theater, the church's original temple downtown. She walked inside and talked to him.

¡Quema! ¡Quema! ¡Quema! (Burn! Burn! Burn!): Exorcisms are loud, intense and a bit unpredictable. From church video

That afternoon, Quiñones left behind her suicidal tendencies and became one of the first converts to the church in Los Angeles.

Over the past eight years, the 58-year-old Quiñones has donated more than $60,000 -- about $625 per month. It is a lot for a working-class Latina, but to her it has been worth every cent.

"I used to feel like one of those pennies that everyone steps on," says Quiñones, a grandmother who makes about $30,000 per year as a cook at a Los Angeles County Jail. "I was rescued from a life of hell, suffering and poverty, and [brought] into a life of faith and peace."

In its early years in L.A., the church struggled. Two pastors, Marco and Marcio, opened the downtown temple in February 1993. Services were restricted to the theater lobby; the auditorium was rat-infested and smelled of feces and urine from years of abandonment and squatter-abuse. Quiñones recalls one morning when she brought Pastor Marcio a burrito for breakfast. "One of the many huge rats that remained in the theater stole it when he stepped away for a minute," she says.

Only a handful of people attended the three daily services, but each received individual counseling from church ministers. "They would hear you out when nobody else would," Quiñones remembers. "They would tell you to put your faith in God, and that He would heal you of your problems."

When she joined the church, Quiñones was on leave from an earlier job as a hospital cook while she recuperated from injuries suffered in the MTA bus accident. Every day, she took the bus from her Boyle Heights home to attend all three services -- morning, afternoon and night.

A native of the Mexican state of Jalisco, Quiñones had been a non-practicing Catholic. The attention she received at the Million Dollar, along with the ecstatic prayers, were welcome after the mostly impersonal services at her old church. Grateful for her new way of life, Quiñones helped the pastors scrub walls and sweep the auditorium.

Quiñones found solace by talking to Pastor Marcio, a young Brazilian man in his mid-20s. He instructed her in the faith of the Universal Church. He became her father in her life of faith, she says. Seeing her devotion, the pastors told Quiñones to buy a navy-blue skirt and a white blouse. She was to become the first obrera in Los Angeles.

About three months after Quiñones joined the church, her shoulder pains ceased. The next year, she got a better-paying job as a cook at the jail. "God was bestowing his miracles through my faith in him and in the Universal Church," she says. When pastors asked the faithful to donate whatever was in their heart, Quiñones began by rummaging in her purse for $5 or $10 bills to put inside the red collection bag. But in mid-1994, a windfall came to Quiñones. Eleven months behind on her rent, she was awarded $40,000 as part of a class-action lawsuit filed after the bus accident. She headed over to the Million Dollar, where she wrote a check for $8,000, sealed it in a church envelope and placed it in the collection bag. "I did a double tithe," she says, showing a copy of the check. "I was so happy that God had done that miracle for me that I felt compelled to tithe that amount to the church."

L.A.'S FLEDGLING CONGREGATION got a big boost in early 1993, when Bishop Renato Suhett, considered by many the most charismatic and popular preacher in all of Brazil, took over the downtown temple.

It was an assignment not entirely to Suhett's liking. He and Macedo had clashed in Brazil, and Suhett figured his boss was trying to get rid of him. As it turned out, their greatest conflict was yet to come, in Los Angeles.

In Brazil, before joining the church in the mid-1980s, Suhett had been a professional guitar player. He became the Universal Church's trademark gospel singer, selling millions of tapes, even writing songs with Macedo. With the dark good looks of a soap-opera leading man, Suhett was the second-most important bishop in the church. When Macedo temporarily left Brazil in 1992, after getting in trouble with the authorities, he put Suhett in charge of the 3,000-plus Brazilian temples. Though not responsible for church finances, Suhett was the unquestionable leader in spiritual matters, he told the Weekly.

All that ended the day Macedo ordered him to move to Los Angeles. His commission: Make the church prosper.

But Suhett saw the order as a demotion. He was surrendering the second most important post in the church to lead a small congregation. "You have to start all over. You are young and can become filled with pride," Suhett recalls Macedo telling him. "My name had become too big in Brazil," Suhett says. "It was necessary that people forget my name, because that's the way it is in the Universal Church. There can only be one big name -- Bishop Macedo's."

The 32-year-old bishop arrived, browbeaten, in Los Angeles. He took over a church-rented Los Angeles apartment and a church-owned Ford Explorer. He found solace in the small but warm-hearted group of 50 members. "I was very sad because I knew I was there not by the hand of God, but by the hand of the man who wanted to see me far away from Brazil," Suhett says. "But the people [in Los Angeles] made me happy. I have never seen people as marvelous as them. They gave their all."

From seven in the morning to midnight, Suhett and his wife, Lucia, would work at the Million Dollar, holding three services, counseling followers sick in body ä or soul. Suhett began a daily television program on Telemundo's KVEA Channel 52, called Despertar de Fe (Faith Awakening). Since the tithes were minute compared to those collected at other Universal Church temples, little attention was paid to the Los Angeles facility.

By mid-1994, however, the church had grown so much that the Los Angeles Fire Department actually intervened when an overcapacity crowd showed up for services. Church leaders began to take notice of the potential of the L.A. market and ordered Suhett to begin holding "campañas," a special offering made by a believer requesting a cure or miracle from God. Campañas, which are usually named after a biblical figure or place, can cost the parishioner from $1,000 to $10,000.