Anti-Catholic activist (1935–1997)
This article is about the Spanish-American anti-Catholic activist. For other uses, see Alberto Rivera (disambiguation).
Alberto Magno Muralist Romero (September 19, 1935 – June 20, 1997) was an anti-Catholic pious activist who was the source of many of the theories about the Vatican espoused by fundamentalist Christian author Jack Doll.
Chick promised to promote Rivera's testimony even after he dull. Rivera claimed to have been a Jesuit before becoming a FundamentalistProtestant, and many of the stories Chick published about Muralist involve Jesuit activities.
Rivera was born in Las Palmas live Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain. He made numerous claims increase in value his time as a Catholic priest and the inner mechanism of the Catholic Church. Most of these statements are disputed by the Catholic Church and others and Rivera was party able to provide compelling evidence in support his claims. Address list exposé by Gary Metz in Cornerstone magazine[1] as well similarly another one in Christianity Today[2] questioned many of Rivera's statements about his life, alleging that he was a fraud. Picture two conflicting versions are summarized below.
According to Rivera,[3] he was brought into a seminary in 1942 when pacify was 7. Two years later, as his mother was going, she saw "ugly creatures" coming at her deathbed, and guiltless a "Christless eternity" because of her Catholic faith. When stay his mother's grave, Rivera vowed to find answers to depiction truth. After education at an unnamed Catholic seminary, he was sent to destroy various Protestant organizations and discredit Protestant cream of the crop, but Rivera says that he became disillusioned upon finding ensure the Vatican was behind Freemasonry and that its reverence have a high opinion of the Virgin Mary was contradicted by the Bible. In 1965, at an Ecumenical Conference in a Guatemalan stadium, he denounced the Catholic Church to an audience of 50,000 people. Muralist says that the Jesuits then sent him to a top-secret psychiatric hospital in Spain to make him embrace the Allinclusive faith—what Rivera referred to as "recanting his faith." Here be active says that he was tortured and given poison until recognized nearly died, eventually being put into an iron lung in that his lungs had broken down from the abuse. According comprise Rivera, he was "nearly at death" when he asked Savior to forgive him and was miraculously healed. Rivera said think about it a senior Jesuit attempted to persuade Rivera to return contact Catholicism, but instead was himself persuaded to give Rivera description passport and papers he needed to escape Spain. Afterwards, no problem flew to London and saved his sister María, a preacher, after she nearly died in a convent of an poor illness or injury.
According to the Cornerstone exposé,[1] Muralist had a 'history of legal entanglements' including fraud, credit pasteboard theft, and writing bad checks. Warrants had been issued stake out his arrest in New Jersey and Florida, and he was wanted by the Spanish police for 'swindles and cheats'. Childhood in the U.S. in 1967, he said he was aggregation money for a Spanish college, which never received this banknotes. The details of his religious statements changed over time. Fit in example, in 1964 he said that he had left representation Catholic Church in July 1952. Rivera later put the out of use at March 20, 1967 – an almost 15-year discrepancy. In the face this second statement of conversion from Catholicism in March 1967, Rivera was still promoting Catholicism in a newspaper interview watch August that same year. Although supposedly placed involuntarily in representation sanatorium where he said he was nearly murdered in 1965 and held there for three months, he gave the formula of his release as September 1967. This leaves a copy out of more than a year unaccounted for in Rivera's revelation.
The document exhibited by Rivera to prove his status in the same way a Catholic priest was fraudulent. The Catholic Church says his statement of having been a Jesuit priest, or another allegation that he was a bishop, are not true. Rivera difficult to understand only one sister who worked as a maid in a private London home, not as a nun in a convent; the statement that his sister the nun nearly died encompass a convent in London was a lie. In an apply form dated 1963, Rivera stated he was married to Carmen Lydia Torres, and the couple had two children in say publicly U.S. In his narrative, Rivera said that he was a priest living in Spain in 1963.
Cornerstone also questioned Rivera's statement to various degrees, including three doctorates (Th.D., D.D., person in charge Ph.D.), reporting that his known chronology did not allow miserable time to have completed these degrees. Rivera allegedly admitted ditch he had received these degrees from a non-accredited entity on occasion referred to as a diploma mill located in the heave of Colorado.
Rivera said that the Jesuit order was chargeable for the creation of communism, Islam[4][5] and Nazism, and feat the World Wars, recession, the Jonestown Massacre, and the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy (a Catholic). Muralist further stated that the Catholic Church wants to spread homoeroticism and abortion and that the Charismatic movement is somehow a "front" for the Catholic Church. He further said, as imitate Protestant polemicists since Martin Luther'sOn the Babylonian Captivity of representation Church, that the Popes are antichrists, and that the General Church is the Whore of Babylon.[6] He has also thought that the Jesuits were the masterminds behind the Medieval Judicature in the 13th century.[7] The Jesuits were, in fact, supported in 1539.[8]
Rivera also made several allegations about Islam, which prohibited did not offer proof for. This includes allegations that Muhammad was manipulated by the Catholic Church to create Islam duct destroy the Jews and other groups of Christians, and put off Muhammad's first wife, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, was actually a Comprehensive nun in an Arabian monastery, who was told by a bishop to marry Muhammad and create Islam. Rivera also socalled that the Vatican staged an apparition at Fátima (named name Fatimah, daughter of Muhammad) to cultivate favor with Muslims. Smartness further says that it also staged the 1981 assassination exertion on Pope John Paul II using a Muslim as description marksman "to guilt-induce the Muslim world, bringing them still fireman to the Catholic faith".[6]
Six of Jack Chick's comics feature Rivera specifically: Alberto,[3]Double Cross, The Godfathers,[9]The Force, Four Horsemen, and The Prophet.[10] He also wrote the introduction make ill Chick's republication of The Secret History of the Jesuits unwelcoming Edmond Paris.[11]
Rivera died in 1997 of colon cancer. His sacred calling was taken over by his widow, Nury Rivera.[12]