One, two, three.

Come, come, you saints, no toil nor labor fear.

But with joy, when you're way.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host John DeLin.

It is May 26th, 2020. We are still in the middle of the COVID-19 kind of global pandemic.

But we're still going strong on Mormon Stories podcast. And we are smack dab in the middle of what I consider to be a really important series.

The series is on the historical claims of Satanic ritual abuse in Mormonism.

And just for those who haven't been following the series, there was what some would call a Satanic ritual abuse social panic that happened in the late 80s and the early 90s here in Utah.

And it was basically a panic where people claimed that groups or covens of of Mormons and Mormon leaders were engaging in Satanic ritual abuse of children and teenagers.

And we were alleging some really horrific acts, including cannibalism and murder and really horrific sexual abuse.

And we've been covering that. We've done several episodes on it.

And we decided that it would be really valuable to bring in a historian, not just a historian that is familiar with the Satanic ritual abuse claims generally speaking.

But one who has done actual historical work and sociological work within Mormonism.

And so I was made very early on aware of an article called A Rumor of Devils, allegations of Satanic child abuse and Mormonism 1985 to 1994, which was a paper that was read by Massimo Introvigne at the annual Mormon Historical Association.

And so I decided to reach out to Massimo or Dr. Introvigne.

And he, even though he's from Italy and he's currently in Lithuania, he was willing to appear on Mormon Stories podcast and talk about his article or his chapter.

Let me go ahead and read a little bit of a bio of Massimo.

Massimo Introvigne is an Italian sociologist and the author of some 70 books on religious pluralism and new religious movements.

He was until 2016 professor of sociology of religions at Pontipical Salisian University in Torino, Italy, Torino.

He can tell us how to pronounce that in just a second.

He has written articles in Theralea for dialogue and B.O.U. Studies.

That's dialogue of Journal of Mormon thought.

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