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A Phony Archbishop Is Selling Olive Oil as a Cancer Cure

Deya is accused of selling 750-milliliter bottles of Solestra olive oil—with the Aldi supermarket logo still on it, we might add—as a personally “anointed” cure for cancer.
Photo via Flickr user dennis

Take a breather, Mediterranean Diet. There's a new olive oil-centric trend on the block and it's so totally going to take the world by storm. And before you ask: No. This has nothing to do with feeding olive oil to your dog to give him luxuriantly luscious locks or slathering the stuff all over your skin to give it a sun-kissed glow.

It turns out that everybody's favorite cooking oil can also miraculously rid one's body of its greatest scourge; cancer. That's right—fucking cancer! At least that's the case if you happen to believe the self-appointed "Archbishop of Peckham"—Peckham being one of the most ethnically diverse areas of London, and the site of the 2011 riots.

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The 63-year-old Kenyan preacher, Gilbert Deya, is said to lead additional churches in Liverpool, Manchester, Crawley, and Reading. He has recently come under fire after an undercover investigation by The Sun revealed that Deya is selling marked-up bottles of cheap supermarket olive oil as a miracle cure for cancer.

Posted by Gilbert Deya Ministries - UK on Sunday, November 9, 2014

To be more specific, Deya is accused of selling 750-milliliter bottles of Solestra olive oil—with the Aldi supermarket logo still on it, we might add—as a personally "anointed" cure for cancer. He says the stuff he has blessed will actually cause cancer to miraculously "disappear," should it be used on food or applied to the body. It also makes for quite the lovely vinaigrette, but that's beside the point.

In case you were interested, the bottle of olive oil that Deya claims to have infused with "mystical powers" sells for around £1.99 ($2.85) at Aldi. Deya, however, has been charging his customer/parishioners upwards of £5 ($7.17) per bottle. You'd also better make sure it's the only oil to touch your soon-to-be-blessed lips, or at least that's what The Sun's investigators—who disguised themselves and approached Deya as a husband and cancer-stricken wife—were informed.

Posted by Gilbert Deya Ministries - UK on Wednesday, February 11, 2015

In fact, The Sun alleges that Deya's close confidant, one Pastor Kamara, told the undercover couple, "Don't use any oil except this oil…and the cancer will just disappear. The healing will take place." Another pastor, Pastor Gabriel, told the investigators, "The oil is not any oil, as the Bishop normally prays with it." Gabriel went on to state, "So this oil heals thousands of people here. Thousands of people…minimum thousand people been healed of every kind of diseases."

That's quite the olive oil business Deya has going, considering Gilbert Deya Ministries is said have a congregation of around 36,000 people in the UK. The Telegraph states that Deya is in fact a former security guard who is in the midst of a ten-year extradition battle with Kenya, where he faces accusations of being involved in a baby-smuggling ring centered in a hospital in a Nairobi slum. Back in 2004, police raided Deya's Nairobi home and took nine children into protective custody. Three years later, Deya's wife was sentenced to two years in prison for stealing a child and passing it off as someone else's.

This is Togo from Dublin City.He was bedridden and could not walk but live on TV he received his healing instantly when… Posted by Gilbert Deya Ministries - UK on Saturday, September 27, 2014

Regardless of his questionable past, Deya seems to have a number of people in his constituency convinced that the olive oil he has specially blessed has extraordinary healing powers. According to The Sun, when one of Deya's associates rubbed oil into the woman's chest, he told her, "This is the start of your miracle."

Talk about a slippery situation.