Please forgive the typos and errors.. I'm typing fromm my phone.

I am a former member of the community, a person in long term recovery, a state certified recovery coach, and community health worker. The numbers the community quoted as "93% of members never use drugs again" is absolutely incorrect and not based on fact or evidence. I would be very interested to see the data. The fact that a "Christian" organization would print such a number without any evidence backing it up is very manipulative and dangerous. Comunita Cenacolo works for some people, there is no way it works for that many people. I personally believe it is a cult and if not, at least a cult-like community, utilizing mind-control techniques and fear tactics to control and re-program the members.

I was in Cenacolo for only nine months. I continue to remain friends with some of the members as the relationships I gained there were very singular and intimate. I was in a house with about 20 people. Of those 20 people, I remained in contact with about 15. I can't think of one who hasn't relapsed with drugs and alcohol and four from that group have overdosed and died. It is harmful for a group to promise such high numbers of recovery and abstinence to unsuspecting people. It is dangerous to boldly lie and practically promise family and members that their child will recover and become a productive member of society. Even 12 Step programs statistically have a 5-10% recovery rate. There is no program or recovery method ever to reach such a number or it would be considered evidence-based and the method would be mass-produced, marketed, and mimicked worldwide.

I myself relapsed while in the community, despite putting all of my faith and efforts into the program. Even in the isolated property I lived on in the hills of Alabama, I managed to choke down a bottle of hand sanitizer that I found on cleaning duty. Some people leave the program and "live" the program post-exit and some people do recover. Some people exit successfully and fall hard. Some people like myself leave the community and find alternative ways to recover. I snuck away during the rare occurrence of being alone, during morning chores. Despite being theatened that if you leave your family would not take you back and they will be instructed to not take you back, to not help you out, but to only redirect you to Cenacolo or not let you into their lives, people still leave


I'm not sure what my exact intentions of my email were. I think Cenacolo claimed a 93% success rate on their website (but I can't find it right now), and I've seen other articles using that number, but, I've never seen any works cited backing it. In the past few years in America during "The Heroin Epidemic", I can count 4 people who I knew from the Community and one other who I don't believe I met. I think I said two last night when I sent this out, but yes, Luke, Gus, Matt, Paul, and Adam. And, I definitely have not completed any survey to compile statistics to come up with the 93% number, so I'd like to know where it comes from. I do become angry, not at you or the article, but at the people promoting this false claim at such a tumultuous time, when drugs and alcohol are killing people in record numbers.

So, yes, my intentions of the email were to give attention to that 93% number (which I also have no technical evidence to disprove) and to expose the real nature of the community. Which is if nothing else a cult-like environmental utilizing mind control techniques and fear mongering to keep young people enrolled, detaching them from their family. While at the same time profiting off of the families, who in America are middle class and higher often providing major contributions to keep the community rolling off of "divine Providence".



I have heard numerous horror stories of physical and verbal assault from the "responsibles" in the community, illegal stays with expired Visas in foreign countries, wealthy members getting special treatment, I've seen members sick and near death without getting granted access to the hospital under extreme conditions, and the list goes on. Cenacolo is supported by the Catholic Church only because no one ever sees what goes on behind closed doors. Everything in the media or interaction with the public is carefully orchestrated and visitors have limited contact with troublesome members.

Comunita Cenacolo will probably continue manipulating parents and members without anyone truly digging into the integrity of the program. I think if the outside world had a closer look within in the community, they would be shocked and it wouldn't appear to be the program as advertised.

I should explain what my post even came about. My response was prompted after being triggered by reading John Joseph's book, The Evolution of a Cro-Mag, in which he spent some time with the Hare Krishas. The particular group he stayed with was later deemed a cult and it reminded me in many ways of my stay at Cenacolo. So I was looking for information about the community to see the public view. I do believe the public view is skewed. I didn't spend any time the houses in Europe or the UK. I stayed at two of the houses in America in St. Augustine, Florida and Hanceville, Alabama.

I, who was addicted to heroin and other hard drugs for a decade and everything else for a total of 17 years, did utilize the 12 step programs to assist in my recovery from addiction, but have stopped attending NA or AA meetings in the past few months as I believe I have reached the 'Exit' stage of change. I have embraced a multiple pathway approach in later years. I utilize health and wellness, principles and values I've discovered that are important to me such as honesty, integrity, and forgiveness (among others), yoga, meditation, selflessness, volunteer work, and family as the structure of my recovery.

I'm not sure what my exact intentions of my post were. I think Cenacolo claimed a 93% success rate on their website (but I can't find it right now), and I've seen articles using that number, but, I've never seen any works cited backing it. In the past few years in America during "The Heroin Epidemic", I can count 4 people who I knew from the Community and one other who I don't believe I met, Luke, Gus, Matt, Paul, and Adam. And, I definitely have not completed any survey to compile statistics to come up with the 93% number, so I'd like to know where it comes from. I do become angry at the people promoting this false claim at such a tumultuous time, when drugs and alcohol are killing people in record numbers. Also, it angers me to see the church and EWTN supporting this community, but really not understanding what they are promoting.

So, yes, my intentions of this post is to give attention to that 93% number (which I also have no technical evidence to disprove) and to expose the real nature of the community. Which takes all possessions from the member, cuts everyone's hair the same, takes most of your clothes, and allows you a certain amount of possessions. All possessions brought to the home become the community's possessions, detaching them from their family, not allowing any leisure time, not allowing any alone time, except during certain tasks, not being allowed to rest despite long working days, 6 days a week. Every moment of your time is planned without you knowing what your plans are at any point of the day, being told to "trust" in Albino as if his word is a divine order, creating a community of mindless robots, while at the same time profiting off of the families, who in America are middle class and higher often providing major contributions to keep the community rolling off of "divine Providence".

You can Google AA or 12-step success rate and pick and choose, but from my findings 5-10% is the accepted statistic. Another good book illustrating the flaws of the 12 Step program is "Empowering the Sober Self." My goal is not to disprove any pathway of recovery, but to illustrate that one specific route will not work for everyone. There are too many biopsychosocial factors involved including trauma and social determinants of health, and recovery capital in play to have a cookie cutter approach to recovery. It just doesn't work that way.

My post is a mess. I did some copying and pasting and did not delete some of the stuff. So, please ignore the repetition, I can't find an edit button.

I am curious to hear how your son is doing now. Has he continued his recovery? Is he still "living" community or has chosen an alternative path to recovery? I'm really curious to hear some success stories from Cenacolo and what that success looks like.

Thank you so much for your information! I have a friend who is currently in this community. January will be 3 years. Her parents don't want her having any communication with any of her old friends good/or bad which I totally understand but im so scared they will try to keep her in there longer against her own will. Do you have any information for me upon departure? what is that experience like? thank you!

This place is bad you guys. It’s bad.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2023 03:55AM by longlivecurtis.

It's disappointing when former members who are drug addicts post what appears to be completely inaccurate information. For example, I've never heard of a 93% success rate or any success rate ever quoted. (wwww.hopereborn.org)

My son needed to enter twice and spent nearly eight years in the Community, mainly in Europe. He exited first when he was 21 after four years. He shared that he did everything possible to move through the program honestly but was too young to commit to a life or prayer after he left.

He married a beautiful young lady he met at a non-denominational bible study, and they had a child at 22. Unfortunately, he found out later that she had past drug problems, which reoccurred. Together they spiraled out of control.

Had it not been for the Community, my son would have killed himself with opiates. I am grateful they gave me my son's life. His ex-wife and many others have died from drug-related incidents. We've attended several funerals with parents who hoped their son or daughter would enter or whose family member left prematurely.

Our son did great the second time, wanting to be a good father. However, when he exited, he knew life with his wife was not a healthy relationship for him and his son. I was raising his son as the state took him away from his wife due to her addiction. He's with his son today, and he's an excellent dad.

He went several years using some alcohol and pot; however, today, at 37, he's a mentor in AA, helping others with addiction, and he's drug and alcohol-free. I am proud of him.

I lived in the Community in Italy with my son for two weeks, and I've been involved as a parent for twenty years; it's not for everyone.

With regards to a cult, if you believe Christ's first church is a cult, then it's a cult. However, I think it's God's work on earth to bring his addicted sons and daughters back to their families and closer to him. Work and prayer are hard, but they are not a cult, in. my opinion.

Drug addicts won't like it, and The Community will ask that you only support this option for your son or daughter because it's the only way they will attend. But unfortunately, most drug users are liars who have destroyed many family relationships and walked on their parents for years. They want you to believe it's terrible for them because they do not desire help.

So, you can look at the positive posts and believe the success stories or the drug users' views that its cult-inspired brainwashing. But, I think my experience and what I witnessed over twenty years from families who have seen the hand of God change their son or daughter. It's a gift to a family whose son or daughter needs a change in life.

God Bless you!

Thank you Clint. This is very reassuring and makes me more hopeful and optimistic. My friend is still in the community in St.Augustine and seems to be thriving. I miss her terribly but so happy she is clean because without this I don’t know what may have gotten through to her. God bless you and anyone who suffers from family/ friends whom are suffering from addiction.

Well, this is the message board that doesn't die.

Seems I'm the only one who checks in on it every few years or so.

I want first update that I am finally in the last weeks before my final profession in my religious community. Just a little over two months to go. Not going to be easy after that, though! If I become the novice master, I'm going to implement some of the same stuff I learned in Cenacolo, which is merely stuff from old style monastic life. I don't remember if I wrote about this before, but my community sent me to India a few years back, and I discovered our novitiate program there was almost totally like Cenacolo! We don't even really have a program here. I have to bring it back from scratch if I am made novice master. So I don't have to say the reforms I will be doing come from Cenacolo, merely from our community in India.

Which leads into what I am going to write about. People, much of what you hear about "cult" or "cult-like" actions in Cenacolo are things that have been practiced by monasteries around the world for CENTURIES. The opening of mail? You think Sr. Elvira invented that? Don't you realize that's what used to happen in Catholic religious orders, at least for their novices?

The regimented days of hard prayer, hard work, and hard sports, all from monastic tradition. Parents, your son or daughter, if they are going into Cenacolo, is not joining the Boy or Girl Scouts. They are going to live a lifestyle similar to that practiced by novices in hard core, traditional Catholic monastic institutions (and if they think they have it tough, have a look at the Carthusians, the toughest order in the Catholic Church today, who live literally as if it was the 11th Century). They will lose a cell phone for a few years; Carthusians lose them for life.

But not every moment will be tough. There will be lighter ones as well. Once when we were practicing for a Passion play, and it was one of the first rehearsals, the guy playing Jesus was put on the cross. The cross was attached to a spring mechanism underneath the stage that allowed it to be lifted quickly, as it was quite heavy. But the guys playing the soldiers forgot to tie him to the cross. So, they sprung the cross, and off flying he went. He landed OK, flying only about five feet, arms flailing in the air. But after our initial shock it became one of the funniest memories of Cenacolo.

But they will have moments, if their hearts are open, much more profound. Moments at times like during Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, where Jesus may speak to them and help them with their wounds.

Some of the things I've heard about online, on this board and elsewhere, are things that should not happen in any religious community. But they do, and why? Because evil exists and it exists anywhere you go on this planet. Many of the houses are run by guys or women still in recovery, so expect that things will not be perfect. You are not sending them to Heaven on earth; you are sending them to Purgatory on earth. But you are NOT sending them to H--- on earth. That's what they are living now.

I will also say that I spent almost a year in Community, and have been back many times to visit since, often when I will stay for days at a time in the Community. I do not deny the possibility that some things written may have occurred, but I never saw a lot of the stuff that has been written. I mean, the stuff being written is often just weird. Not saying it didn't happen, but it certainly wouldn't have happened when I was there. In fact, when I was there, the guys who were around would have thought such stuff was crazy and not a part of any of our experience. For example, animal cruelty. The worst I saw was the killing of a rat, and that was after it defended itself against a cat we had on the property, making the cat scared of it. One of our guys proceeded to kill it with a baseball bat to get rid of the vermin. The cat was part of a set of kittens we had discovered on one of our Rosary walks along Godwin Road at Mary Immaculate. Someone had cruelly put them in a box and just left them there, way up the road from our property. We had compassion for them and took them in. Other than the rat killling, plus having farmer Allen shoot our pigs now and then for meat, we didn't kill anything. We had chickens that could have been killed, but at the time we only used them for eggs. We took in and cared for those kittens and they became our cats. Guys liked to chase an armadillo that was under our walkway at night, but I always thought that was dumb because what would they do if they caught it? Nothing. And they never caught it.

So again, I'm arriving finally at the end of this portion of the journey, which Cenacolo was an integral part of. I can't imagine my life without the experience I had in Florida, without being at the Festival of Life in Italy, without Lourdes. If I didn't experience Cenacolo, I would not today know what real religious life is supposed to look like, and I could not implement it here when and if I get the chance.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2023 10:49AM by Jay.

By definition, it is a cult. It's not a "death-cult." But it is a cult. Listening to a few people's testimony is not the same as having hard data. You saying it is effective carries the same weight as me saying its ineffective. Without data, all there is to show are personal accounts. It seems like the amount of horror stories are equal to the positive ones. As a former resident of the cult, I would probably not recommend it to anyone, unless they are very religious, want to work and pray from day until dusk, have no free-time, leisurely activity, and have exhausted every single possible other option. There are plenty of ways to substance use recovery that are actually evidence-based and have data to support efficacy.

I hope you're still doing well. The Community is a very unique place. I hope you are alive and well. Although I'm personally not a fan and think it could be improved in numerous ways, I am happy to hear if someone is successful.