Fugitive televangelist ‘The Appointed Son of God’ caught after secret bunker hunt

Davo City, Philippines: The Appointed Son of God, as his followers call him, favours satiny white suits. The young women who surround him in photos are often clothed in the same virginal hue.

Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, the 74-year-old founder of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, The Name Above Every Name, is a charismatic doomsday evangelist who claims millions of followers in about 200 countries. His sermons have drawn the faithful in Ukraine, Hong Kong, Brazil and New York. He served as spiritual adviser to Rodrigo Duterte, the powerful former president of the Philippines.

And now Quiboloy, who is also known as The Owner of the Universe, is in custody after a search in the southern Philippines that enlisted thousands of security forces. On Sunday evening, Benjamin Abalos Jr, the Philippines interior secretary, announced the fugitive preacher had been caught. The pastor’s lawyer said Quiboloy had voluntarily surrendered. Police said security forces had negotiated the surrender from the pastor’s compound.

Apollo Quiboloy appears on his talk show.Credit: AP

Quiboloy is on the FBI’s most wanted list. He faces charges in the United States and at home of masterminding a human trafficking and child sex abuse ring. He has been accused of rape, including of minors. Through his lawyers, Quiboloy has denied all the charges.

The search for the fugitive pastor, to serve him a Philippine arrest warrant, is also about a megachurch that US and Philippine prosecutors say has depended on labour exploitation and the deception of people least able to afford the financial burden placed on them.

And Quiboloy’s fate exposes an array of rifts in Philippine society: between a Catholic majority and a growing evangelical population; between a moneyed elite from the Philippine capital and power brokers from the country’s periphery; and between the president of the Philippines and his vice president.

For more than two weeks, rows of police officers had stood guard behind riot shields on the perimeter of a sprawling church compound in Davao City, in the southern Philippines, some fanning themselves with laminated wanted posters of the pastor. Police officers swarmed the campus, searching for Quiboloy. Police helicopters circled over a cathedral, a college and a 75,000-seat stadium which, when finished, was to be one of the biggest megachurches in the world.

With thousands of police officers, many heavily armed, descending on the church campus, Quiboloy’s followers responded with a kind of siege mentality, fortifying themselves with reruns of the preacher’s sermons playing on a giant screen. Amid the unrelenting heat, they sat on plastic chairs, gazing upward. They clapped and sang and swayed.

Police holding a poster with pictures of the fugitive Apollo Quiboloy and his associates outside the gates of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ compound.Credit: Jes Aznar/The New York Times

On social media, they continue to assail what they believe is a politically motivated effort to dethrone their king, a plot many believers still say is orchestrated by malign forces in the United States.

Top security forces came to believe that the pastor had hidden himself in an underground bunker in the nearly 30-hectare compound, which the flock calls New Jerusalem. In the days before his capture, police told The New York Times how thermal imaging and radar technology had recorded, deep in the earth, the warmth and heartbeat of a human body.

The Appointed Son of God

Quiboloy’s critics call him a Rasputin whose ability to harness large voting blocs for favoured politicians made him a kind of spiritual kingmaker. His flock considers him a descendant of God who can stop earthquakes and says he is being unfairly targeted by the Philippine establishment and its American patrons.

In 2021, a US federal grand jury indicted Quiboloy and other church officials operating in the United States on charges that include conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion, the sex trafficking of children, and smuggling huge amounts of cash. Girls as young as 12 worked as Quiboloy’s personal assistants, or “pastorals,” the 74-page indictment alleged.

The pastorals, including two girls who were 14 and 15, were forced to perform “night duty”, a euphemism for sex, with Quiboloy, the indictment said. Female victims wrote “commitment letters” in which they devoted their lives and bodies to Quiboloy, the indictment said, risking “eternal damnation” if they demurred.

Two former pastorals told the Times of the psychological hold Quiboloy had on them and how guilty they were made to feel if they tried to reject his sexual advances. Female aides deemed to have sinned were sent to a property on the outskirts of Davao City called Prayer Mountain. One of those former pastorals said her head was shaved and she was made to wear orange clothes, like a prisoner. She was beaten with a wooden paddle, she said.

The police raided and searched the Kingdom of Jesus Christ headquarters.Credit: Jes Aznar/The New York Times

The pastor was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list, which described his aliases as “Sir”, “Pastor” and “The Appointed Son of God”.

Despite the seriousness of the charges, a US arrest warrant was never served in the Philippines. Quiboloy continued to preach from the church’s headquarters in Davao City, where representatives of the Kingdom, as the sect is known by its followers, also ran a college, law school, airline and a McDonald’s franchise. The Kingdom controlled an influential media network, too.

At the time, in 2021, the Philippines was led by Duterte, who is now being investigated by the International Criminal Court for allegedly ordering thousands of extrajudicial executions. Duterte called Quiboloy his spiritual adviser. He also counted on the pastor’s vocal support for his political campaigns.

With Quiboloy on the run, the former president, who served as Davao City’s mayor for more than 20 years, took on duties as the administrator of the Kingdom’s properties.

On a wall outside the church compound, Duterte’s support for the pastor is printed on a block-long banner.

“Our country has never been in a more tragic state as it is today,” Duterte’s statement reads. And he accuses his successor, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, of turning the Philippines into a police state.

Marcos assumed the presidency two years ago and chose Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte, also a former mayor of Davao City, as his running mate in a union of two powerful political clans. Known familiarly as Bongbong, Marcos is the son of a US-backed dictator who in his two-decade rule plundered state coffers and ordered his own extrajudicial killings, according to human rights groups.

Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte called Quiboloy his spiritual adviser. He also counted on the pastor’s vocal support for his political campaigns..Credit: AP

The Dutertes have positioned themselves as gritty, populist counterpoints to a soft, moneyed, pro-American political class exemplified by the Marcoses. The two families’ political alliance in 2022 was awkward from the start.

In April, members of the Philippines Senate pushed for the arrest and detention of Quiboloy for having failed to appear at hearings into the trafficking and sex abuse charges against him and other church leaders. In June, police tried to serve an arrest warrant but failed to find the preacher and several others at the Kingdom’s campus. On August 24, about 2000 police officers descended.

Police say dozens of their officers were injured by church members wielding rocks and other objects, while the Kingdom’s representatives said it was dozens of their members who were harmed by the security personnel, some in full battle gear.

“Just because there is a warrant of arrest, that is not a license to trample on the human, property, religious, academic rights and property rights of other persons,” said Israelito Torreon, chief legal counsel for the Kingdom.

On September 1, the 39th anniversary of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ’s founding, Sara Duterte flew to Davao City to show her support for Quiboloy. On the oversized screen in the compound, a church-affiliated news network excoriated her boss, Marcos.

Asked by the news media the whereabouts of Pastor Apollo, as Quiboloy is known, Sara Duterte answered with a smile.

“He’s in heaven,” she joked, vowing to the sect’s believers that “I will always be with you in your darkness.”

Life in the Kingdom

With New Jerusalem heaving with heavily armed police officers, their places of worship off limits, the Kingdom’s followers turned a fast-food eatery owned by the church into their command centre.

Until April, the shop was a McDonald’s. But the charges against Quiboloy spooked the international company. Now it has been rebranded as Waxi’s, offering Davao specialties such as rice burgers and durian coffee.

Crowding the tables every day were the Kingdom’s members, mostly women and mostly dressed in funereal black. On their phones, they watched newscasters from Sonshine Media Network International, or SMNI, a popular radio and television broadcaster that is majority owned by the church and its representatives.

The network’s YouTube channel has been shut down because of the charges against Quiboloy, and the Philippine House of Representatives has approved a bill revoking its franchise. But SMNI continues to stream online. Last month, the Philippine Court of Appeals ordered Quiboloy’s assets frozen, including bank accounts connected to SMNI.

Combined police forces surround the gates of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ compound in Davao City,.Credit: Jes Aznar/The New York Times

Sophia Argentine, a purchasing manager for the Kingdom, runs Waxi’s. Before that, she was a “volunteer manager” of the McDonald’s. Argentine, who asked to be only identified by part of her name, is one of about 2000 faithful known as “workers”, who live in the compound and donate their earnings to the church, according to former and current members.

Argentine said she joined the Kingdom 20 years ago, when she was in college, after her mother was swayed by Quiboloy’s televised preaching. The church later financed her study in Japan, although Quiboloy was so worried about her being alone abroad that he called her back home before she earned a degree, she said. Argentine said she does not collect a salary and has no savings.

“Everything is free in the Kingdom,” she said.

Today, the Kingdom claims anywhere between 3 million and 7 million parishioners around the world, depending on which church official is talking. (Former members say the global congregation is far smaller.) But when Argentine first began living in the compound in Davao City, she said, the sect was so impoverished that she would buy fruits and vegetables rejected by markets to feed the growing congregation.

US and Filipino law enforcement say the church grew rich soliciting donations from people who could barely afford it and from the forced labor of its members. Argentine’s mother, an ophthalmologist, sold her properties and gave her life savings to the church. In Davao City, children roamed the streets, selling trinkets and handing their earnings to the Kingdom, former churchgoers said.

To remain in good standing, worshippers had to meet increasingly onerous monetary quotas by soliciting donations or selling whatever small items they could, US and Filipino prosecutors said. The US indictment alleges a roll call of abuses: In the United States, church workers were forced to raise money nearly every day, often sleeping in cars at night. Those who neglected to raise enough cash were often locked in rooms and denied food. The church arranged sham marriages to import workers to the United States.

Michael Jay Green, an American lawyer and global general counsel for the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, rejected any wrongdoing by the church. He said the charges against Quiboloy resulted from a grudge held by a corrupt former church official who made up lies about sexual abuse and persuaded 14 others to falsely testify.

Police helicopters fly over the Kingdom of Jesus Christ compound.Credit: Jes Aznar/The New York Times

“I don’t think you’re ever going to change the loyalty of the people in the compound that were educated, fed and clothed by this Kingdom for years,” Green said.

Green acknowledged that the sect’s workers sign vows to raise money for the poor, a similar structure to the Church of Scientology, he said.

The Kingdom is particularly popular among members of the Philippines’ large overseas workforce. On the streets of Singapore, Dubai, Los Angeles and beyond, they raise money for the Children’s Joy Foundation, which is supposed to aid underprivileged children. But at least one branch of that charity was bogus, the US indictment alleges, its money used not to help orphans but to fund the lavish lifestyles of Quiboloy and other church elders.

Quiboloy travelled in a private jet. One of his birthdays was celebrated in a chandeliered banquet hall at a Shangri-La Hotel in Hong Kong, three attendees confirmed. Four former church members told the Times that he particularly liked to choose young pastoral aides from Ukraine because he found them fair-skinned and beautiful.

In the Philippine Senate hearings, former members accused the church and Quiboloy of labour exploitation and sexual abuse. Two Ukrainian women said in video testimony they were raped by Quiboloy while serving as pastorals. A Filipino woman told senators that Quiboloy raped her when she was a minor. The pastor ignored a subpoena to appear at the Senate hearing, prompting the order for his arrest. His representatives say that he is innocent of all charges against him.

Argentine said she worked for a time as a pastoral, but she denied the job required dispensing sexual favours. The church, she said, was both moral and conservative, forbidding women from wearing revealing clothes. Quiboloy had to sign off on marriages between the Kingdom’s workers, she said. The pastor had high standards for prospective husbands, and consequently many women, including her, did not get married, Argentine said.

Kingdom of Jesus Christ members inside a restaurant owned by the religious group in Davao City.Credit: Jes Aznar/The New York Times

‘Very, very close friends’

As the search for Quiboloy dragged on, the Kingdom’s representatives said they hoped the Duterte political clan would save the church and its founder. Some police officers stationed at the compound who were from Davao City said their allegiance was with Rodrigo Duterte, not their bosses from the capital, Manila. Argentine said local police told her, “Don’t worry, madam, we will not hurt you or the pastor.”

Green said Quiboloy and Duterte were “very, very close friends.” The former president, he noted, first gained prominence and popularity in the Philippines because he “was executing drug dealers.”

”President Duterte was as serious and law-abiding as any person in the Philippines,” Green said. “Do you think that he would embrace a pastor who was molesting children?”

Argentine said that when Duterte, then Davao City’s mayor, was running for president, the Kingdom gave him “unlimited flights” in an Apollo Air helicopter because he didn’t have any money. A former employee of Apollo Air confirmed Duterte’s reliance on the airline. The Kingdom’s compound has a taxiway that connects to the Davao City airport.

While president, Duterte steered relations away from the United States, which once colonised the Philippines, and embraced China instead. The Duterte family has intimated that the United States is orchestrating a character assassination campaign against Quiboloy.

For days, representatives of the Kingdom had insisted that Quiboloy was not in the compound, and that even if he were, the church would not give him up unless the Philippine Department of Justice promised not to extradite him to the United States. The Philippine government said it could not honour such a request.

“He wants to clear his name here,” said Torreon, the church’s chief legal counsel, referring to Quiboloy.

And his followers maintained their conviction in their pastor. Argentine said she thought Quiboloy was initially able to escape the pursuit of the regional police chief because “the pastor passed through walls.”

That a non-believer police chief was the only witness to such a miracle, rather than the faithful who had dedicated decades of their lives to Quiboloy and the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, was, she admitted, a cause of regret. The security presence in the compound, day after day, had worn them all down.

“It’s a spiritual test that we have to overcome,” she said. “We have to humble ourselves. But it’s hard.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.