PONCHATOULA, LA. - Two decades ago, Hosanna Church was one of the fastest growing congregations in the cypress flats of Tangipahoa Parish on Lake Pontchartrain's northwest rim and its pastor, Louis Lamonica, was a beloved figure."That man could really preach," said Bill McCormack, a Ponchatoula resident who attended the church as a boy. "He was an awesome local icon."But by two years ago, when the church finally closed after a ferocious falling-out between the late pastor's son and successor, Louis Lamonica Jr., and his family, the congregation that once neared 1,000 had dwindled to 10 or 15 troubled souls from a handful of families.And now, many of them, including the former pastor and a deputy sheriff who once lived on the church grounds, are behind bars, accused by the police of a litany of ungodly offenses, including sexual abuse of perhaps two dozen children and the mutilations of cats for satanic rituals.Eddie Robinson, assistant pastor at the 5,000-member Harvest World Outreach Ministries in nearby Hammond — to which many Hosanna members migrated — says what happened is clear. He told congregants Sunday that a prophecy of "witchcraft" problems had been revealed to the church leadership in recent weeks."When the leadership of that church kept the enemy out, everything was fine," Robinson said. "But when the leadership of that church let the enemy in, things began to change."The authorities — who got the first whiff of trouble six weeks ago when a woman, Nicole Bernard, 36, called the sheriff's office from Ohio to say she had fled the town to save her child from sexual abuse — are still trying to piece together what happened.Nine people have been arrested in the past week. A dozen computers have been seized, at least some of which the police think contain child pornography, as well as dozens of videotapes, hundreds of computer disks and eight large boxes of documents and photographs. Inside the shuttered church compound, in a "youth hall" behind the sanctuary, the police found the faint imprint of satanic pentagrams on the floor that someone had apparently tried to scrub away. Some of those arrested, the police said, described rituals within those pentagrams involving cats' blood and people dressed in black robes.The abuse victims ranged in age from 1 to 16, the police said. Sheriff Daniel H. Edwards of Tangipahoa said that as many as 25 children might have been involved in sex acts at the youth center, in cars and in the homes of at least two of those charged.Tangipahoa and surrounding parishes are fervently religious, and worshippers at other churches are wondering how something so troubling could have occurred."It has definitely affected my customers," said Diane Pepitone, owner of Heavenly Gifts Christian Bookstore. "The general consensus is, if anything like this can happen in a place like Ponchatoula, with all the churches we have, it can happen anywhere."
Originally posted by rpm The bright side is that in Louisiana, they are facing the Death Penalty.
