The national Swedenborgian church is suing two top leaders of its former Boston affiliate, including the treasurer who has a criminal record and a mob past, for allegedly trying to command the affiliate's finances.
The church, known as the General Convention of the New Jerusalem in the United States of America, filed a lawsuit in federal court earlier this month against treasurer Edward MacKenzie and Thomas J. Kennedy, the affiliate's president.
The Boston affiliate severed ties from the national and state churches after a dispute last year involving its pastor's family. It set up new bylaws, making it easier to join the affiliate and removing provisions that barred individuals from enriching themselves with church assets and requiring a two-thirds approval of members for sale of church property.
The lawsuit alleges MacKenzie and Kennedy are working to control the money matters by engaging in fraudulent loan transactions that involve the sale of church-owned apartments above the Beacon Hill chapel.
The 145-unit building is valued at $30 million but could be worth $75 million if converted to condominiums, according to the Boston Sunday Globe. Annual income generated by the building is more than $1.2 million, according to documents.
The lawsuit asks the court to nullify the memberships of more than 40 people who joined in the last two years, give control of the Boston congregation to the national church and prevent MacKenzie and Kennedy from selling the church-owned apartments as condos.
MacKenzie denies the allegations.
"There are about six or seven families who are complaining," he told the Boston Sunday Globe. "This church was the best kept secret on Beacon Hill.... We've opened up the church, and we're going to continue to open it up."
MacKenzie freely admits he was a drug dealer and a henchman for Whitey Bulger and the Boston Irish Mob, but insists he has reformed.
Still, he faces two criminal complaints: one for threatening to kill his former wife, who was to testify against him in a worker's compensation case; the other for swindling $200,000 from an elderly woman.
MacKenzie denies both allegations.
The Swedenborgian Church is named for 18th-century Swedish scientist and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg.
Swedenborg's unorthodox interpretation of the Bible, which includes the tenet that believers — not God — decide their own fate, was denounced as heretical by mainstream Christians. The church spread rapidly in early America; in the 1920s, Helen Keller was one of its most visible members. Officials at the national office in Newton say there are 1,500 members nationwide.