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  • 2018-03-14 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a Church of Lucifer Open in Colombia? (en)
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  • The Prince of Darkness garnered a wicked share of social media buzz in early 2018, with mentions ranging from reports that Chelsea Clinton tweeted a friendly New Year's shout-out to Satan worshipers to the revelation that a Luciferian house of worship had opened its doors in Colombia. Examples of the latter were typically couched in apocalyptic tones and illustrated with lurid images and videos purportedly documenting the church's existence and popularity: For starters, the video, which was shot in January 2017, is entirely unrelated to the images and has nothing to do with a Luciferian church, or devil worship in general. On the contrary, it shows hundreds of revelers in Riosucio, Caldas, a small town in northwestern Colombia, participating in the biennial celebration of Carnaval del Diablo (Carnival of the Devil), described by the web site Devils of the Americas as a Catholic festival: By contrast, the images, which date from 2016 and were shot in a different part of the country, depict a church utterly devoid of parishioners. It was built by a self-styled Luciferian high priest and brujo (sorcerer) who does business under the assumed name Víctor Damián Rozo (his real name, according to a profile in the Colombian news magazine Semana, is Héctor Londoño Villegas). Rozo claims to have followers all over the world. He also claims to have built the church (officially dubbed the Luciferian Temple, Seeds of Light), so worshipers of Lucifer would have a place to congregate. In reality, there's little evidence that the building, erected on Rozo's own property, serves any other purpose than providing a backdrop for his self-promotional videos. Judging from his Twitter activity (under the handle @damianrozo666), Rozo's primary enterprise is selling so-called pacts with the devil, the benefits of which include financial enrichment: There's a catch, of course. In exchange for his services as a Luciferian deal-maker Rozo demands a percentage of his clients' future incomes. It's hard to determine how successful he has been at this scheme. Though he portrays himself as a globetrotting millionaire, the regional newspaper Crónica del Quindío points out that promotional photos of Rozo visiting exotic locales were created by digitally inserting his likeness into existing images. In short, although it does exist, Colombia's controversial Church of Lucifer appears to be less a religious (or anti-religious) institution than the home base for a bizarre confidence scheme run by its owner, Víctor Damián Rozo. A reporter for Vice Colombia came to a similar conclusion after peeking behind the curtains of Rozo's operation in 2017. Among the deceptions he was caught engaging in was paying local residents a few pesos each to pose as devotees of Lucifer: (en)
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