What is Rome burning?

This article was previously published in the Lepanto Institute website

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

The Foreign minister of Argentina declared publicly that there is evidence of a destabilization effort aimed at a huge swath of the South American continent. Ecuador and Chile are close to declaring a state of siege,  the leftist government of Bolivia has suspiciously intervened in the recent presidential election apparently reverting illegally the original results. Violent protests have rocked Brazil recently. Dozens of lives have been lost both in Ecuador and Chile.

Influential individuals in Argentina’s political scene point at the fact that these protests appear to be an extreme overreaction when one considers the claims that caused the unrest to start. In fact, there is evidence of a coordinated effort with very clear goals. Groups of very well organized people are aiming to destroy or interrupt the normal distribution chains of food, fuel, and essential services. This week, a top official of the Venezuelan government appeared to take credit for generating the continent-wide turmoil.

The Chilean government has detained several Venezuelan nationals participating in the protests there. The same old technique of slow infiltration and dormant cells appears to have been used there. Since crowds of impoverished Venezuelan refugees have fled their formerly prosperous country looking for a better place to live, it must have been easy to pepper any number of Chavista agents among them. Iranian and Cuban nationals are also involved according to some reports.

Presidential elections in Argentina will take place on October 27. The left-leaning Peronists obtained the majority of votes in the mandatory primary elections. The leftist (some say Chavista) presidential formula enjoys the unofficial blessing of His Holiness Pope Francis. Handmade signs across Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital city, urge people to read the Pope’s Laudato Si while trying to convince the public to vote for the Peronist electoral front.

A recent video shows an incident at the Ezeiza International Airport near Buenos Aires. The Immigration Service computers malfunctioned at the time several crowded flights arrived. The officials in charge simply allowed everyone to enter the country without even presenting a passport. Many believed that was a coordinated action seeking to allow Cuban, Iranian, and Venezuelan agents to enter Argentina to further the chaos already raging in Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, and Brazil.

Off the record, many voices are expressing the suspicion that Rome is partly orchestrating this campaign seeking to revert the continent’s turn to the right that followed the surprising victory of Donald Trump in the American elections of 2016 and the subsequent triumph of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. If anything, the vociferous and violent marches through the streets of major South American cities, are horrifying the electorate that is beginning to associate the political left with chaos, poverty, and a dismal performance of the economy.

The influence, real or imagined, of Francis’ Catholic Church is not adding any prestige to the brutal maneuvers of the political left. The Catholic Church has been bleeding souls non stop since the days of the II Vatican Council. Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and other Christian denominations in Latin America are growing at an unprecedented pace, feeding from the corpse of a Roman Catholic Church gravely wounded by Liberation Theology and a generalized liturgical and pastoral chaos.

Pope Francis’ well known Peronist tendencies and the reports of strange neo-pagan ceremonies performed with the approval of Vatican authorities, have done nothing but embarrass those who really know about the current plight and real ancestral beliefs of the Amazon’s aboriginal peoples. If anything, the strategic instructions emanating from Rome seem to be backfiring: watching the flames consume downtown has never generated great political motivation after all. The political left, inside and outside the Church, are setting their future on fire adding plenty of carbon monoxide to the atmosphere of our old, tired planet.

If anything, the old cliches of the political left are beginning to wear out. The vast disaster that is Venezuela, with its “national church” presiding on a landscape of misery and death, is perhaps the greatest poster the political right could ever wish. In the same fashion, the involvement of those decrepit ideologues currently holding the Amazonian Synod, do nothing but push more souls out to the ever-growing non-Catholic denominations in the region.

Many wonder if Pope Francis is maneuvering to govern Argentina by proxy. I doubt it but he may feel bound by duty to do something for his country, a country he has never returned to visit where a good part of the Catholic population is ashamed and embarrassed by the Pope’s fumbling moves and his continued attacks on Catholic Tradition and character.

The story that started with the Amazon forest fires and now continues with this incomprehensible conflagration, hurting the poor and downtrodden of this long suffering continent, is casting an ominous shadow on the Vatican. Those leading the Church appear to have lost all bearings and seem close to go down in flames themselves.