“Traditionalist Catholic” leaders last month expelled 57 evangelical Christians from towns in two states for refusing to participate in their religious festivals.

Leaders of traditionalist Catholicism, a mixture of Roman Catholicism and native rituals, expelled 32 Christians from their homes in a village in Hidalgo state and another 25 from a town in Oaxaca; in each case, the evangelicals were deprived of their property for refusing to participate in drunken festivals that included worship of Catholic icons.

Australian actor Mel Gibson has poured another $15.2 million into his controversial private church in California’s exclusive beachside suburb of Malibu.

Gibson’s secretive sect is not recognised by the Catholic Church because it does not acknowledge the authority of the Pope or the Vatican and rejects the universally accepted teachings of the Second Vatican Council.

Mel Gibson has poured a further $10 million into his controversial sect in the Malibu hills as he oversees the construction of a 400-seat church to expand his flock of followers.

Mel Gibson made so much money from 'The Passion of the Christ' that he's now putting it where his mouth is, so to speak. He's continuing to build a religious compound in Malibu for Catholics who reject Vatican II, and is implicitly endorsing his controversial father's beliefs by helping him launch a similar church in Pennsylvania.

Hutton Gibson has been making a three-hour drive each week for the past year from his home in Summersville, W.Va., to rural Westmoreland County, a round trip of more than 300 miles, just to attend Sunday Mass.

Religion has always made for good box office returns, from Ben Hur to Field of Dreams. Mel Gibson's new movie, The Passion of the Christ, which opens in the UK on Friday, was made with $30 million ( £16 million) of his own money but it has already returned ten times that sum in its first month's screening in the US. This suggests it could eventually generate revenues of at least $2 billion in worldwide film, television and DVD rights. Not bad for a picture which is in Aramaic and Latin - prompting jokes that it will have to be entered in the foreign language category in next year's Oscars.

Knight Ridder Newspapers, July 9, 2003