A woman in Cape Breton’s gay community is among several people who have been receiving what she considers religiously-themed pieces of hate mail recently.

“The letter talks about how I need to go to Jesus and admit I’m a sinner,” says Madonna Doucette. “It’s pretty heavy-duty stuff.”

She says she was shocked to receive a letter encouraging her to repent her sins. The envelope is addressed not to her name, but to her job title – the LGBT education co-ordinator at the AIDS Coalition of Cape Breton.

“Because I’m one out of only a handful of people that got it, and because of my position that it was addressed to, I can’t help but wonder if it was a little bit more targeted.”

The letter doesn’t specifically mention homosexuality and other people who have received it are not from the gay community but it does have strong religious overtones.

It says ‘if you were to die this night you will go to Hell because you have sinned and the punishment of sin is death.’

The letter is not signed and there is no return address.

“I felt hurt, that’s how I felt. I read through the letter and at the end of the letter I saw a list of five or six websites, including a local church that I thought was better than this,” says Doucette.

At the bottom of the letter, there are five religious organizations listed to go to for more information, including the Cape Breton Christian Fellowship Church, a non-denominational group in Sydney.

However, its pastor says the letter has nothing to do with his church, which he calls an ‘uplifting, inclusive’ environment that would never endorse such a hateful message.

“We’re hoping that whoever it is that’s doing this would just stop,” says Kevin Mattatall. “It’s not something we feel is of our opinion or our view.”

The other four organizations are not in the Maritimes, which is raising questions about whether the letter originated elsewhere.

Mattatall says his church members were told at Sunday’s service that if any of them had anything to do with the letters, he wants them to stop.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Ryan MacDonald