A BOURNEMOUTH vicar is to be questioned by senior officials in the Winchester diocese after Europe's first white priest of Haitian voodoo conducted a meeting in his church hall on Tuesday night.

Ross Heaven, a healer based in East Sussex, was the guest speaker at an event organised by the Bournemouth Positive Living Group, having worked with shamans from the Amazon, eastern Europe, America and the Caribbean.

Mr Heaven is a speaker about vodouism (he says the spelling voodooism is incorrect) on radio and television. He writes regular articles for Prediction magazine on Shamanic healing, described on his website as "power retrieval, soul retrieval, energy balancing and spirit extraction".

He has a degree in psychology and is an ordained priest of the Afro-Caribb-ean shamanic tradition.

Anglican leaders are stunned by the event.

The Venerable Adrian Harbidge, Archdeacon of Bournemouth, said: "This is definitely not the sort of event that should be on church premises. I will want to discuss this with the vicar, Graham Wheeler, as a matter of urgency.

"Some very old churches have in their trust deeds that their halls are also the village/community hall and so a wide variety of events will be held there, but that's not the case with Bournemouth churches.

"Activities in our church halls must not conflict with the ideals of the Christian church.

"People who try to control God, or the spiritual life through witchcraft or anything else, are opposed to our work and are in opposition to Christianity."

The Rev Graham Wheeler, vicar of St Ambrose, said: "I didn't know there was a voodoo priest speaking at my church and I'm grateful to the Echo for telling me.

"The Positive Living Group use our church hall regularly, and sometimes the church is used for extra space. It's an open meeting so anyone can go along, but there's no official membership - it's just a booking.

"Some of the talks the group organises are of considerable interest, but this is too controversial and way over the mark.

"In future I will want the group to submit all programme plans to me and if I deem them too controversial, I will disallow the booking."