They desperately wanted to go to heaven. But their leaving of this world was surely more like a vision of hell.
Eight days ago, the men, women and children of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments cult packed into a hilltop church in a quiet, picturesque corner of Uganda.
They wore robes of green, white and black and prayed fervently for hours. They believed the end was nigh. While others would perish in a terrible calamity for ignoring the Commandments, salvation was theirs. The Virgin Mary had personally guaranteed it.
But when the final moment came, no deity intervened to save the cult from a ghastly, painful death. As the flames licked around them, the followers clutched one another or curled into tight balls. Nobody escaped.
In the following days, 330 skulls were counted in the piles of ashes but the authorities estimate the death toll at 530. At least 78 of the dead were children.
Ugandan police are still trying to piece together the cult's final hours before the blaze.
Yesterday, police found the corpses of 163 more people buried in a compound used by the cult in Buhunga, about 60 kms from the church at Kanungu. "They must have died in a matter of the last few weeks," said Mr Jim Muhwezi, a police spokesman. "It would appear wherever they had a church they had a killing."
The corpses appeared to have been strangled and the discovery reinforces suspicions that the victims of the Kanungu blaze, who were initially thought to have committed suicide, may have been murdered by their leaders.
The question most people want answered is whether the cult's leader, former teacher Joseph Kibweteere (68), was among the dead.
Like most of the cult's followers, Kibweteere was a Catholic. He held senior positions in Catholic schools during the 1950s and 1960s. He later became a political activist for the opposition Democratic Party leading up to the 1980 Ugandan election.
He claimed to have his first visitation from the Virgin Mary in 1984, when she appointed him leader of the movement. However, it wasn't until 1990 that the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments was officially established. Kibweteere was then excommunicated.
"He claimed he could talk to God, which was unacceptable. Even I, as a bishop, cannot speak to God," said Bishop John Baptist Kakubi, who excommunicated him, last week.
Not a charismatic preacher, Kibweteere attracted adherents using an audio cassette which was claimed to be a recording of a conversation between the Virgin Mary and Jesus. On the tape Mary said that if the Commandments were not observed the world would end.
As well as attracting teachers, farmers and policemen to the movement, Kibweteere also succeeded in attracting Catholic priests and nuns. One priest, Father Dominic Kataribabo, was the former head of a seminary and had graduated with a masters in psychology from a university in California.
In 1995, Kibweteere moved the cult's headquarters 80 kms from his native Ntungamo district to the village of Kanungu, in the south-west of Uganda, following tensions with the local Catholic hierarchy. Ms Cledonia Mwerinde, a former prostitute, provided a 10-acre plot in the fertile, hilly countryside.
Life in the commune was austere and showed the signs of a control culture seen in cults worldwide. Members were forbidden to speak to outsiders and communicated in sign language. They worked 11-hour days and prayed at night. Men and women slept in separate dormitories and sex was forbidden.
Kibweteere decreed this was the correct observance of the Commandments and a fitting preparation for the end of the world. However, on New Year's Eve last year the faithful were to be disappointed and tensions began to emerge.
"They had high hopes that the year 2000 would bring a great sign from God. But it never materialised and was the cause of grievances between leaders and followers," former cult member Emmanuel Besigye said last week.
The disillusion was stemmed with the announcement of a three-month delay, which Kibweteere claimed was communicated to him by Jesus.
Then a few weeks ago, cult members from other districts started to arrive in Kanungu. All land and possessions were sold off and anyone who asked was told that the money was for a new vehicle and a generator. Nobody suspected a thing. Even all their debts and tax arrears were cleared.
Three bulls were slaughtered and 70 cases of soft drinks bought for a huge party on Wednesday, March 15th. Two days later, over 500 people gathered in the rough church for their last hours of singing and praying, before burning to death.
There remains significant doubt that all were willing participants in the suicide. Suspicions were raised early on when nails were discovered in the charred window frames, indicating they had been nailed shut from outside.
Last Tuesday, local fireman pulled decomposing bodies from a pit latrine under the leaders' living quarters. Some had been poisoned while others had been hacked to death. They are believed to have been dissenters within the cult.
Initial theories that the followers doused themselves in petrol have been followed by the discovery that Kataribabo bought 40 litres of sulphuric acid days before the fire. Mixed with petrol, the acid would create the sort of explosion heard by villagers before the church burst into flames.
Police are treating the deaths of all children as murder. Their only lead is a woman who came to the compound to see her parents on the fateful day, only to be turned away. Police are also investigating contacts Kibweteere had with other cultists in Austria, Italy, Germany and France.
The Catholic Church has been quick to dissociate itself from the group and has forbidden Mass to be said for the dead. The Ugandan government, which disbanded a similar millennial cult in September, has closed down all remaining branches of the sect.
Amid the confusion about the final moments of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments, one thing is certain: its followers were expecting the end of the world.
But whether they expected it to end in such a gruesome and painful fashion will never be known.
