Formation 1969 Website scientology.cc | Type Religious | |
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Headquarters Hollywood, California, United States | ||
Church of Scientology Celebrity Centres are Scientology churches that are open to the general public but are intended mostly for "artists, politicians, leaders of industry, sports figures and anyone with the power and vision to create a better world."
The Celebrity Centre International was established in Los Angeles, California, in 1969 by Yvonne Gillham, a Sea Org member who worked with L. Ron Hubbard. Since then, other centres have been established in Düsseldorf, Florence, Las Vegas, London, Munich, Nashville, New York City, Paris, Vienna, and a number of other cities across the world.
Critics of Scientology point to Hubbard's launch of "Project Celebrity" in 1955 to recruit celebrities into the church, and that the centres were established as an extension of this initial purpose. The church denies the existence of a policy to actively recruit high-ranking celebrities.
Violent incident
On November 23, 2008, Mario Majorski arrived at the Los Angeles Celebrity Centre wielding dual samurai swords and threatening to injure people. Majorski was shot by Celebrity Centre security guards, and was later pronounced dead at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. Police regard the guards' actions as justifiable. Majorski was a Scientologist in the early 1990s; however, he left the group fifteen years prior to the incident, according to church spokesperson Tommy Davis. When he was still a member of the church, Majorski had filed lawsuits, later dismissed, against Louis West, a psychiatrist who was critical of Scientology.