Pope Francis will pass into history for his struggle against the Vatican establishment, his undeniable personal charisma and a revolutionary style reflected in his own apologetic style, based on his rejection of formalities and his people skills. His Papacy also stands out for bringing to an end the Euro-centered conception of the Roman Catholic Church and the emergence of the centrifugal Church.

Is Latin America the scene of a struggle between the CIA and Pope Francis?

Bergoglio adopted the papal name of his admired Francis of Assisi (il poverello d’Assisi) and no sooner elected Pope, he exclaimed: “How I would like a Church that is poor and for the poor!”, a phrase that alludes to the spirit of poverty of the first Christians and the ideals of social justice of Monsignor Romero, who three decades ago said: “The mission of the Church is to identify with the poor”; it is also a message of hope for those who still dream of making this utopia a reality in Latin America”.

Thus, in Latin America, in the past two decades we have witnessed the phenomenon of the incursion of the evangelical churches (sects or cults according to the Vatican hierarchy), that arose in the decade of the 80s under the inspiration and sponsorship of the CIA with the unequivocal goal of displacing Catholicism as the dominant religion.

In their version as Latin-Americanized evangelical churches, they have managed to trace a new spiritual architecture in the so-called backyard of the United States, while they have also woven a dense network of contacts as undercover agents of the CIA in order to overthrow Progressive Presidents and support candidates loyal to the United States (in particular, in Bolivia and Brazil).

The differences are not so much in dogma, as pastoral and of organizational structure, since the evangelical movements have a horizontal rather than a hierarchical structure, such as the Catholic Church, which has contributed to extending their influence, since the people identify the Catholic Church as an institution centred on the dominant elites and enclosed within the structures of political power in these countries (with the exception of the countries of ALBA).  As a result, in spite of recognition of the social work of catholic priests in their many fields of action, a massive transition of former catholic members to the protestant evangelical churches has occurred, in which Pentecostalism stands out, englobing 75% of the total of evangelical worshipers in Latin America and the Caribbean. Thus, according to the National Centre for Scientific Research of France (CNRS), the evangelicals represent some 25% of Christians in the world with more than 560 million worshipers (107 million of them in Latin America and the Caribbean), with Guatemala as the paradigm of the new Latin American spiritual geography, with 50% of its population as evangelicals.

In consequence, Pope Francis has put special emphasis on the task of supervising this spiritual geography in order to attempt to detain the incessant hemorrhage of worshipers from the Latin American Catholic Church, for which he needs to support the movements of regeneration that are already emerging in the Latin American Church if he aims to avert the fossilization of the Catholic Church in Latin America and to further the development of the postulates of the Second Vatican Council.

One of the keys to this reform is that, in the national churches, laypersons and women can acquire a growing leadership in carrying out general affairs, for which it becomes essential that the once absolute power of bishops and cardinals be reduced and delegated to structures at the base. This is equivalent to a missile aimed at the waterline of the US strategy for Latin America that seeks to bring countries of the “backyard” back under the tutelage of the United States, in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine (America for the Americans).  And we cannot rule out the workings of an endogenous plot that is aiming to reinstate the Roman Church under pontificates stewarded by the true power in the shadow (CIA-Vatican establishment).

05/12/2019

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop).

- Germán Gorraiz López is an analyst.