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Alberto RiveraAlberto Rivera is the source of many of Jack Chick's stories about the Vatican. He was born in Spain in 1935 and died of colon cancer in 1997. Jack Chick promised to promote Alberto's claims even after he died and claims that the Jesuits murdered him. He claims to have been a Jesuit before becoming a Fundamentalist Protestant, and many of these stories involve Jesuit conspiracies. Very little is known about Rivera -- his own story is that he was born in Spain and educated at a Catholic seminary. He claims to have been sent to destroy various Protestant organizations and discredit Protestant leaders, before becoming disillusioned upon finding that the Vatican was behind Freemasonry. He claims that he exposed the Catholic Church at an Ecumenical Conferrence in 1967 at a stadium in Costa Rica to 50,000 people. He claims that the Jesuits sent him to a top-secret location in Spain (then ruled by the Franco dicatorship) to make him recant his faith. According to Rivera, he was tortured and put on drugs until he nearly died. He claims that he was put into an iron lung because his lungs had broken down. But nearly at death, he claims that he asked Jesus to forgive him and then Jesus set him free. He then claims that he flew to London and rescued his sister, a nun, after she nearly died in a convent. According to Alberto, Jesuits are responsible for the recession, communism, Nazism, the World Wars, the Jonestown Massacre, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, for which Jack Chick takes Rivera as an authority. Some of these claims are that the Catholic Church justifies homosexuality and abortion, that the Charismatic Movement is a front for the Catholic Church, that the Popes are antichrists, that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Revelation, and that the Prophet Muhammad was used by the Catholic Church to create Islam and destroy the Jews and Christians. Six of Jack Chick's comics feature Rivera specifically: Alberto http://www.chick.com/reading/comics/0112/albertoindex.asp, Double Cross, The Godfathers http://www.chick.com/reading/comics/0114/godfathersindex.asp, The Force, Four Horsemen, and The Prophet http://www.chick.com/reading/comics/0117/theprophetindex.asp. The last charge rests on a somewhat suspicious quotation. The stories are so extreme that many people dismiss them out of hand, though Chick also printed a series of counterclaims in reply. Chick's comics and tracts came to be removed from many Christian bookstores on the grounds that his anti-Catholic charges were false and bigoted. Chick then withdrew from the Christian Booksellers Association after the CBA began considering whether to expel him. Chick calls Rivera the most godly man he has ever met and claims that the charges against him and Rivera are themselves a plot by the Catholic Church. External links
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