For our good friends from the church of L Ron, it's not so much a tragedy as an opportunity

Psychopath, conman, liar, fantasist, fraudster, bully, tax evader, megalomaniac – it's fair to say L Ron Hubbard's death was a blow to global humanitarianism. Happily, there is a silver lining to the cloud that has hung over Earth since the founder of Scientology shed his corporeal form in 1986. That silver- lining is the high profile, expansionist figures who represent his organisation today – and the good news is that they're turning their thoughts to Haiti.

Were an idiot like you to itemise the myriad things that this most wretched of disaster zones currently lacked, chances are you'd omit "militant Scientologists who claim post-traumatic stress is a conspiracy created by the evil psychiatric profession, and who believe the correct response to extreme shock is to touch sufferers with one finger, before attempting to convert them to the ways of Hubbard".

All I can say is, thank God for John Travolta. The Wild Hogs legend has unveiled his response to the unfolding crisis, announcing: "I have arranged for a plane to take down some Volunteer Ministers and some supplies and some medics." For the medics and supplies John must obviously be thanked, but for the Volunteer Ministers – arriving in Haiti via Air Travolta along with scores from other Scientology churches – the same cannot be said.

According to an official press release, the corps will be on hand to dispense "spiritual first aid" to Haitians. Because really, nothing should feel more appropriate right now than gadding about Port-au-Prince offering survivors the chance to be hooked up to an e-meter. Hopefully if they find any gay people, they can begin curing them.

For the Volunteer Ministers, you see, a tragedy is not so much a tragedy as a tragitunity.

But please, don't take Lost in Showbiz's word for it – take that of L Ron himself, who personally decreed the strategy he called "Casualty Contact", in which he advised Scientologists to scan newspapers for reports of accidents or bereavements, searching for "people who have been victimised one way or another by life".

Stipulating that one way to do this was to trawl hospitals, Hubbard declared of the ambulance-chasing Scientologist that, "He should represent himself . . . as a minister whose compassion was compelled by the newspaper story concerning the person [. . .] However, in handling the press he should simply say that it is a mission of the church to assist those who are in need of assistance. He should avoid any lengthy discussions of Scientology and should talk about the work of ministers and how all too few ministers these days get around to places where they are needed. It's straight recruiting!"

Casualty Contact has since modulated into the Volunteer Ministers programme, whose yellow tents are increasingly visible at high-profile disaster sites, and often enlivened by special appearances by their celebrity adherents. Within these tents Scientologists administer the aforementioned Touch Assists, whose purpose is to "speed the Thetan's ability to heal or repair a condition with his body".

After 9/11, aid agencies at Ground Zero voiced concern that the Volunteer Ministers had displayed their leaflets around the disaster site and operated in the restricted area without authorisation until this was pointed out to the police, who then denied them access. Two days after the tragedy, and presenting themselves as an organisation called National Mental Health Assistance, representatives of the Church of Scientology duped Fox News into running the church's freephone number for five hours on the bottom of the screen, apparently in the belief that it was the official outreach hotline. Fox News removed it after an irate intervention from the real National Mental Health Association.

"The public needs to understand that the Scientologists are using this tragedy to recruit new members," the president of the NMHA stated. "They are not providing mental health assistance."

Au contraire, say the Scientologists, who claim they provide a unique brand of "meaningful help" during catastrophes. They were there after the tsunami, after Katrina – with added Travolta – and in Beslan, before being asked to leave after the local Russian health ministry judged their techniques unhelpful to already severely traumatised children.

And of course they were there after the 7 July attacks, when an undercover BBC investigation taped the leader of the London branch of the Church's anti-psychiatry movement laughing that their role in the immediate aftermath of the bombings was "fighting the psychiatrists; keeping the psychs away [from survivors]". One survivor who happened to have mental health training voiced his shock that Scientologists had attempted to recruit him and others.

What sort of numbers they'll do in Haiti remains to be seen, but hats off to Travolta and the church leaders for deploying in this way. As for Scientology's most famous face, do recall "the Mr Cruise response to 9/11" – setting up the First New York Hubbard Detox project where firemen who had breathed in the World Trade Centre dust were encouraged to submit to the "Purification Rundown", discarding their medication and taking endless saunas along with high doses of niacin, much to the despair of their doctors. Whether even Tom's nuclear self-confidence extends to mooting the First Port-au-Prince Hubbard Detox Project, only time will tell.