The religious hoax of the century?

In a recent EN book review I expressed regret that the author had been taken in by the false claims of Alberto Rivera. An overseas reader asked for more details of what was perhaps the most successful religious literary hoax of the past century.

Alberto Rivera (1935-1997) was born and brought up in the Canary Islands where harassment of Protestants was much less than in mainland Spain.

His mother died when he was nine. As a teenager he left the Roman church and was baptised in the local evangelical church at 17. After working as a fare collector on the buses, in 1955 he independently obtained a place at a Protestant seminary in Costa Rica, but was expelled in 1957. For a time he worked for the Methodist Church in Costa Rica, and in 1964-5 for the Christian Re-formed Church in New Jersey, USA, who dismissed him.

Photographed as priest

In 1967 he returned to Spain where he was employed in a Christian school and again dismissed. He then secured work with children in a Catholic parish. It was in this era that he had his photograph taken in priest's clothes on an identity card, and also obtained a certificate from the Archbishop of Madrid 'confirming' his status as a Catholic priest, which he was not.

In a brief visit to London in 1967, he encountered the Church of God in Prophecy and went to work with them in Tennessee, but was dismissed in 1968. He reappeared dressed as a priest in Puerto Rico in 1968, but returned to Florida in 1969 as a Protestant. In 1969 he functioned briefly as a priest in the Liberal Catholic Church, but left Florida suddenly and went to Seattle in Washington State. Eventually he ended up in California.

It was here that he established himself as an anti-Roman evangelist, and was also ordained as a Baptist minister. He claimed to have been a Jesuit agent, undermining Protestant churches, and to have knowledge of various atrocities, including murder, by Catholics. This message was carried around the world in millions of tracts.

Exposed as a fraud

Rivera was exposed a fraud in Christianity Today (March 13 1981) and in the Journal of Pastoral Practice the same year. He was exposed again in Forward (the magazine of the Christian Research Institute, USA) in 1983. Other exposures followed in Australia and South Africa - but some Canadian Protestants still believed in him. Roy Livesey, the British publisher of New Age Bulletin (to whom I am indebted for information) wrote a book, as yet unpublished, documenting the fraud.

In some ways Rivera was a typical confidence trickster. Accusations of theft, especially of money, constantly followed him, making a frequent change of address desirable. His employers (and, later, his employees), had cause to lament dearly the day he came to them. He usually had a hard luck story. He would tell the Protestants he had been persecuted by the Catholics or by a previous Protestant employer, and he told the Romans that he was a victim of the Protestants.

Evil faces

The Alberto tracts are notable examples of hate literature. The Roman Catholics in them have demonic faces, and apart from the absence of hooked noses could have stepped straight out of medieval anti-Jewish caricature, which eventually contributed to the Holocaust. There are stories of Catholics being converted by them, but for the more intelligent Catholic they simply show the malicious credulity of that church's critics.

The fraud is not a minor event. Even though Alberto never became well-known in the UK, the tracts have cascaded in millions among the barely literate of the Third World, poisoning the efforts of evangelical Christians to preach to Catholics. To support his stories, he also de-famed the evangelicals with whom while young he had been in fellowship, claiming to have subverted them. Those who exposed him, even members of his church, were accused of being Jesuit agents.

Still circulating

'The evil that men do lives after them', and the full extent of the damage may not be known for years. Alberto literature still circulates in the Protestant sub-culture, and widely in South America and the Third World where comic books are more appreciated.

Some of those who knew Alberto regard him as a paranoid schizophrenic. In the fantasies of those so afflicted, the Jesuits and the Roman Catholics often join the Masons, the Jews and intelligence agencies as favourite characters, along with exalted claims of being oneself an agent.

Looking back, those who had been deceived by Alberto sometimes paid tribute to his mesmerising plausibility. He took advantage both of the good will of Christians - their readiness to help those in need and also of Christian ill-will, the eagerness to credit evil to those who believed erroneously. Perhaps he was simply an evil person.

How the exposures were made

It is not easy to trace the movements of a man who lived in many countries. But in dealing with Alberto, Christians had two advantages.

First, Alberto was contemporary. It was possible, for example, to travel (as Roy Livesey did) to the Canary Islands and meet those who had known Alberto from his youth, to consult and copy photographs and other church records This left no doubt that he did not attend a Jesuit school. Spanish -speaking church members in Costa Rica and neighbouring countries could give personal testimony about the havoc he wrought. which had nothing to do with his fantasy about being a Jesuit secret agent.

Secondly, Alberto's repeated changes of denomination left a paper trail across many church offices. Sometimes law enforcement agencies joined in, even the FBI, with vain attempts to get money back.

A typical document is a business card from 1973 issued by Alberto Magno R. Rivera (He had added the name Magno in later years.) He gives his degrees as D.T. D.D N.D. and DRH; by now he liked to be known as Dr Rivera. He also claimed at that time to be a Bishop in the Apostolic Catholic Church. The usual problems with unpaid bills soon brought this scam to an end.

And yet all the exposures in the world did not shut the Rivera fraud down. The tracts continue to be available, both to Christian bookstores, and now to anyone with a Web connection. At a time when the Church of Rome is very powerful, and Protestantism is in a parlous state here, some believers are still implicated in this wicked fraud. Where is the Christian discernment?

A typical story

'As I pulled the wood, the blanket unrolled, and I froze at what I saw. There were the bodies of seven little babies. Each had three crosses cut into their heads, a cross on each palm, and the bottoms of both feet, and on their chests were two large crosses. Their hearts were gone, the cross looked like this ( diagram in original ) which means the peace of Christ. I was so scared I couldn't speak.'

This is followed by another mutilation story involving a 13 year-old girl. The man who invented and spread these fantasies was clearly very disturbed. Christians would not usually allow them into their world, but here they have been smuggled in as anti-Catholic writings (from The Force).

Protestant dilemma

Typical of the problems caused by Rivera and others like him is a new booklet by Alan O'Reilly, Britain under Siege, published by Christian Concern, of Nuneaton.

This is an attack on the catastrophic decline of our nation as a Christian bulwark. Some of it comes from respected agencies like the Christian Institute or (on the secular side) The Social Affairs Unit. But other material is derived from questionable sources, especially American writers who are grossly ignorant about the UK.

O'Reilly says of Rivera: 'The series encountered not only opposition from Rome but also from genuine but compromised Christian believers, trying to remain on friendly terms with the whore of Revelation.'

What do I do? I am very worried about the state of the nation. I take the Protestant faith to be based on Scripture, restated in the Reformation creeds, and in great peril today. I am not interested in being on friendly terms with the Church of Rome but I cannot go along with a malicious hoax.

This is not an isolated error. Having read the two-volume life of Bishop Westcott (in the Evangelical Library) I know also that statements made in the booklet about him are quite wrong. Because his biblical views are rejected, his life story is mangled.

All Protestant writers should avoid quoting American authors on British history unless they have checked the sources! In view of the immense numbers of heresies and cults which arise in the States, British writers should be especially on their guard against revelations from there.

The true story of Alberto Rivera uncovered