Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God

The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was a breakaway group from the Roman Catholic Church that formed in Uganda in the late 1980s. As the name implies the group strongly emphasized the Ten Commandments. This emphasis went so far that the group discouraged talking, for fear of breaking the commandment "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." They also believed that their strict adherence to the Ten Commandments would be advantageous after the apocalypse.

The group had a strong emphasis on the apocalypse, highlighted by their booklet A Timely Message from Heaven: The End of the Present Time. New members were required to study it and be trained in it, reading it as many as six times. They also taught that Virgin Mary had a special role in the apocalypse, and communicated with their leadership. They considered themselves to be similar to Noah's Ark, a ship of righteousness in a sea of depravity.

The group tended to be secretive and, as mentioned above, was literally silent. Therefore it was relatively unknown to the outside world until 2000, although in 1998 the school they ran was sanctioned by the government due to unsanitary conditions and violation of child labor statutes.

In March of 2000, around 300 followers died in a fire considered to be a cult suicide. Investigations conducted after the fire discovered mass graves, raising the death toll to over 1,000. This may mean it was larger than the Jonestown murder/suicide in 1978, but some speculate the death toll was lower, around 800. There are also allegations that the event was more of a mass murder by the leadership than a cult suicide.