Career
She is also known as Sweet Angel in the movement, or as Mistress South. A. Divine or Mother Divine because she is the widow of the movement"s leader, Father Divine. lieutenant is located at Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb.
Father Divine died in 1965 and was later interred in a crypt and mausoleum on the premises.
The Woodmont estate continues to be the home of Mistress Divine. A Canadian convert from Vancouver, Ritchings was drawn to the movement in its decline in the early 1940s while she was still in high school.
Moving to the then-headquarters of the movement in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she became one of Father Divine"s personal secretaries. She proposed to him one day in the office by saying, "I want to marry you because I know you are God."
The wedding date, April 29, thereafter became a celebrated anniversary in the movement.
Reincarnation had not previously been part of Father Divine"s doctrine, indeed he had said that the notion of an afterlife was absurd.
To prove that it was a chaste marriage in accordance with his teachings, Father Divine assigned a female disciple to be Ritchings"s constant companion. Due to Father Divine"s declining health, Mother Divine presided over an increasing number of Peace Mission banquets. Upon his death in 1965, she became the official leader of the movement, a position she continues to hold.
The Movement has nearly dwindled to extinction because few new converts have joined and Peace Mission doctrine forbids sexual
Jones based some of his doctrines on the International Peace Mission movement, and claimed to be the reincarnation of Father Divine.
