Alberto Rivera
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'Alberto Rivera' is the source of many of Jack Chick's fantastic 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 then claims that he exposed the Catholic Church at an Ecumenical Conferrence in 1967 at a stadium in Costa Rica to 50,000 people. He then claims that the Jesuits sent him to a top-secret location in Spain 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 then put into an iron lung because his lungs had broken down. But at near 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, World Wars ,the Jonestown Massacre and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Many of Jack Chick's claims came from Alberto Rivera. 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 have been published starring Alberto Rivera. They are Alberto, Double Cross, The Godfathers, The Force, Four Horsemen and The Prophet. This last charge is backed up by a rather suspicious quotation. These stories are so extreme that many people would easily dismiss him. However, Jack Chick printed them in a series of color comic books, and used it for information in his tracts. This led to Chick's comics and tracts being removed from many Christian bookstores , on the grounds that his anti-Catholic charges were false and bigoted. Jack Chick withdrew from the Christian Booksellers Association ,after the CBA began considering whether to expel Chick. Jack Chick says that Alberto Rivera is the most godly man he has ever met and claims that the charges against him and Rivera are a plot by the Catholic Church.
