# Massimo Introvigne

Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955) is an Italian sociologist of religion, author, and intellectual property attorney. He is a co-founder and the managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), a Turin-based nonprofit organization which has been described as "the highest profile lobbying and information group for controversial religions".

## Early life and work

Introvigne was born in Rome, Italy on June 14, 1955. Introvigne earned a B.A. in Philosophy from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1975, and a J.D. from the University of Turin in 1979. He worked for the law firm Jacobacci e Associati as an intellectual property attorney, specialized in domain names. In 1988 he co-founded the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), a nonprofit organization based in Turin that studies new religious movements and opposes the anti-cult movement. Introvigne is the group director of CESNUR.
He joined Alleanza Cattolica in 1972, a conservative lay Catholic association, for which he has received much criticism. From 2008 to 2016, he was the vice-president of the association. Beginning in 2012, Introvigne was listed as an "invited professor of sociology of religious movements" at the Salesian Pontifical University in Turin. Introvigne is a proponent of the theory of religious economy developed by Rodney Stark.
In 2012, Introvigne was appointed chairperson of the newly-formed Observatory of Religious Liberty of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Beginning in 2018, Introvigne was editor-in-chief of the daily magazine on religious issues and human rights in China and elsewhere, Bitter Winter, which is published by CESNUR.

## New religious movements

Swedish academic Per Faxneld [sv], writing for Reading Religion, described Introvigne as "one of the major names in the study of new religions." Sociologist Roberto Cipriani has called Introvigne "one of the Italian sociologists of religion most well-known abroad, and among the world's leading scholars of new religious movements". In George D. Chryssides's Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements, Introvigne is noted to be "regarded as a cult apologist" by members of the anticult movement.
In 2001, sociologist Stephen A. Kent described Introvigne as a "persistent critic of any national attempts to identify or curtail so-called 'cults'", arguing that,
    "In the context, therefore, of the debate over Scientology in France and Germany, CESNUR is a think-tank and lobbying group, attempting to advance Scientology's legitimation goals by influencing European and American governmental policies toward it. It is not a neutral academic association, even less so because on its web page Introvigne intermingles ideological positions within solid research and information. On issues, however, that are key to the religious human rights debates — apostates, brainwashing, undue influence, compromised academic research, 'sect' membership and the potential for harm, critical information exchange on the Internet, etc. — he advocates doctrinaire positions that favour groups like Scientology."
In the mid-1990s, Introvigne testified on behalf of Scientologists in a criminal trial in Lyon. After Introvigne was critical of the publication of the 1995 report on cults by the French government, journalists described Introvigne as a "cult apologist", saying he was tied to the Catholic Alliance and Silvio Berlusconi's then ruling party. Introvigne responded that his scholarly and political activities were not connected.
Introvigne has written on the concept of brainwashing. CESNUR published the Encyclopedia of Religion in Italy in 2001, of which Introvigne was the main author. Journalist and Scientology-critic Tony Ortega penned a series of 2018/19 articles criticizing The Journal of CESNUR as an unreliable "apologist journal".

## Personal life

Introvigne is a Roman Catholic. Introvigne is also director of CESPOC, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. He was the Italian director of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, which included the leading academic scholars in the field of the literary and historical study of vampire myth. In 1997, J. Gordon Melton and Introvigne organized an event at the Westin Hotel in Los Angeles where 1,500 attendees came dressed as vampires for a "creative writing contest, Gothic rock music and theatrical performances".