It had been a long journey from Ireland to Greece, and from there across the Mediterranean to the Israeli port of Haifa. Now, the group of pilgrims hoped, they would soon be driving through the Holy Land, their visit inspired, they said, by a call from the Pope himself.

They planned to spend a total of six months in Israel discovering a country whose everyday names echo across two millennia. Once over the formalities at Haifa, they had decided, they would head straight for Galilee, where the Bible records Christ walked on water.

Later they would spend Christmas in Bethlehem, Christ's birthplace, and then travel the rest of the Holy Land for three months.

They were led by Dr Dermot O'Leary, whose long dark hair and beard make him look something like a cross between a 1970s Latin American student revolutionary and a film extra from the set of The Greatest Story Ever Told. Though Dr O'Leary is no revolutionary, he was certainly trying to lead his children into a promised land of sorts; his children being a motley collection of pilgrims travelling under the banner, as it were, of the Pilgrim Community, a little-known group from Co Wexford.

Twenty-five strong, they included 18 Irish citizens, six adopted Romanian children and a Colombian woman, believed to be a nanny. Several members of the group were physically or mentally handicapped. The somewhat unconventional appearance of the pilgrims, who travelled in a white Mercedes minibus, was underlined by the collection of animals they brought with them.

The immigration officers at Haifa were unimpressed. Despite being refused a visa by the Israeli embassy in Dublin, the group had set off in any event, perhaps giving rise to the cause of the problems about to befall them. The Haifa authorities waited four hours before telling them they were being denied entry to Israel.

According to Dr O'Leary's wife, Helena, they were then told simply to get back on the ferry. "We were completely flummoxed," she said.

Two members of the group went to a nearby police station to call the Irish Ambassador, Mr Brendan Scannell. They claim they were told to go into a cell. "You must be crazy," Helena O'Leary says they replied. Ms O'Leary says that at one point, while she spoke on the phone to Mr Scannell, the authorities told her she had run out of time and to hang up.

"When we objected they rushed at us. Some of them had batons drawn. One of our group had his fingers bent back and had to get treatment later. Another person was kicked in the ribs," she said.

They didn't fight back, "because we are a non-violent group".

They were forced back on board the ferry, the Nissos Kypros registered in Limassol, Cyprus, and held in a single room guarded by armed police. Eventually it set sail for Cyprus.

And so it was that between October 7th, when they left the Greek port of Piraeus, and the start of last week when they were expelled from Israel, a perhaps odd - but hardly dangerous - group of Irish pilgrims found themselves being described, in the words of one Greek newspaper, as a "Noah's Ark full of heretics".

THEY may not realise it yet, but in terms of public relations it has been a good week for the Pilgrim House Community, from near Gorey, Co Wexford. Nobody, it seems, has a bad word to say about the 10-year-old group, beyond the suggestion that they were naive to uproot and head for Israel, against the advice of Mr Scannell, before a final decision was made on their visa application.

They believed, wrongly as it transpired, that even if the application was refused, they could still enter Israel for up to 90 days without visas; hence the decision to travel. Instead they found themselves swamped by headlines about doomsday cults and the like.

When in Ireland, members of the Pilgrim Community live in a Georgian house with a new chapel and living quarters at its secluded base in Castletown, a few miles off the N11 near Gorey. The buildings, on the old Hyde Park estate, are reached by a short drive through woodland and are not visible to the public.

Neighbours say they know nothing about the group: its members keep to themselves and maintain minimum contact with the local community. But there is no shortage of people in Wexford and elsewhere willing to vouch for it.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, the Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, Mr Brendan Howlin, Labour TD for Wexford, and the group's parish priest in Gorey all think the Israelis got it wrong.

David Quinn, editor of the Irish Catholic - whose predecessor, Bridget Ann Ryan, is a member of the group - said he did not know much about the community, but enough to be able to say: "The idea that they are some sort of cult is completely barmy. They are just a collection of very strong believers who seem to be putting their money where their mouths are."

For the past couple of years the issue in which the group has been most involved has been the treatment of asylum-seekers in Ireland. Until recently it ran a cafe, Mary's Abbey Bistro, with reduced-price meals for asylum-seekers, in Mary Street in Dublin.

The group was featured earlier this year in an article in the British Catholic weekly, the Tablet, which reported that a survey carried out by the community had revealed that 95 per cent of African asylum-seekers in Ireland had experienced racially-motivated verbal or physical attack.

The Eastern Health Board is also satisfied that the group is bona fide, at least in terms of the residential care it provides for its mentally handicapped members. The board is funding six such places for the community this year, at a cost of over £90,000, and carries out twice-yearly inspections of its Castletown base.

TO THE Israeli authorities, however, the Pilgrim Community were a group of religious extremists, hell-bent on marking the millennium in their own particular way. In off-the-record briefings, a Cyprus government source told The Irish Times that Israeli information, passed to Nicosia while the ferry was en route from Haifa back to Greece, suggested the pilgrims belonged to a group called Sekta and aimed to commit mass suicide in Israel at the New Year.

Pressed, the Cypriot source said this was merely what was said: the Israelis did not elaborate, apparently.

The pilgrims were refused entry to Cyprus. According to Glafkos Xenos, the Cyprus police spokesman, they refused to answer routine questions. They refused to say whether they wanted to "enter the country as tourists or as applicants for work permits". They would not reveal whether they had funds to support themselves while on the island or allow veterinary officers to examine the "large number of dogs and cats" accompanying them.

According to the government spokesman, Mr Michalis Papapetros, members of the group "refused to co-operate with the authorities absolutely . . . They refused to answer standard questions [put by immigration officers] permitting them to enter the country. They refused to answer even a single question."

Back in mainland Greece yesterday (via Rhodes from Cyprus), the group's surreal odyssey was not over. Installed in a hotel in Corinth, they were fending off media inquiries from as far away as Japan.

"We're in a situation where we have to defend ourselves all the time," said Ms Foley. "The idea that we are terrorists is absurd. The idea that we have some suicide pact is even more ridiculous. We have mentally handicapped and physically disabled people in our group. To be blunt, how could these people be able to physically take their lives?"

They are shocked at what happened to them. One member, Mr Martin Smith, criticised Israel. "It's appalling for a democratic country like Israel to act in this way," he said. "The authorities there treated us very badly."

Ms Foley said: "One newspaper wrote that we were `Noah's Ark full of heretics'. A lot of us found that very hard to take. We are Christians who simply wanted to visit the Holy Land."

A long way from Gorey, the group has yet to decide its next move. Ms O'Leary does not deny they still want to get to the Holy Land in time to mark the new millennium.

"We are thinking about it," she said yesterday, pausing to add: "We have a lot on our minds."

Helena Smith is at helenasmith@interagora.gr Peter Murtagh is at pmurta@irish-times.ie