Idols at the Amazon Synod
“My House Will Be Called a House of Prayer.”
At the Amazon Synod, the house of prayer of Santa Maria, a Catholic church in Rome, was violated by the placement in it of several statues of an Amazonian idol, Pachamama (Mother Earth). In the spirit of Jesus driving buyers and sellers out of the temple, two young men removed the idols from the church, took them to the Tiber River and, as seen around the world, threw them in.
The idols show a naked woman in late term pregnancy. Idolaters turn to her for fertility and good fortune, instead of turning to the one true God and trusting in His goodness and providence. The Pachamama is an object of veneration, a goddess to which some Bolivians sacrifice llamas, especially their fetuses. It is an earth deity worshiped by some Peruvians, rooted in pagan Incan beliefs and practices, including human sacrifice. The idols were placed in the Catholic church as part of the Amazon Synod.
Alexander Tschugguel and another young man removed the idols. Alexander is a 26-year-old Austrian Catholic who said that he did not want the Catholic Church to allow the worship of idols. He founded the St. Boniface Institute in order to promote the Catholic faith and culture through the voices of young Catholics who want to stand up for the truth in public places and be heard.
Alexander named his Institute in honor of St. Boniface who was an eighth century missionary in Germany where the pagans idolized “sacred” trees. As the pagans looked on and cursed him, Boniface strode up to the tree of Donar, that honored the false god Thor, and struck it with an ax. The huge tree miraculously fell and shattered into pieces. At the sight of this extraordinary spectacle, pagans stopped their cursing and, on the contrary, began to believe and bless the true God. Later, St. Boniface used the pieces of the tree to build a church on the spot in honor of St. Peter.
In 16th century Mexico, Hernan Cortes, the Spanish Conquistador, saw Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec idol, at the top of the temple in what is now Mexico City. 80,000 people were sacrificed before this idol in a four-day orgy in 1487. Cortes demanded its removal.
The Aztec priests refused to remove the idol. So, Cortes marched up the temples steps, grabbed a metal bar and, according to an eyewitness, he supernaturally leapt up into the air and smote the idol’s eyes saying, “We must risk something for God!” He then stripped the temple pyramid of its idols, cleansed the stone of its blood and erected a new altar for the sacrifice of the Holy Mass. On what had been the place of evil bloody human sacrifice, now became the place of the unbloody, eternal and true sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Alexander and his friend simply followed the good examples of St. Boniface and Cortes and dishonored false gods.
“I Am the Lord Your God, You Shall Have No False Gods Before Me.”
God’s first commandment is, “I am the Lord your God, you shall have no false gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3). “You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them”. (Exodus 20:4-5). 
Before the idols were placed in the Santa Maria church, they were exhibited as part of a pagan ritual before the very eyes of Pope Francis. As he looked on, an Amazonian woman chanted to the idols. I saw a video clip of several people who carried the statues in procession to Pope Francis who made the Sign of the Cross over them. After that they were placed in the church.
Although Vatican spokespersons denied that the statues were Pachamama, Pope Francis himself called them by that very name. Also, as Bishop of Rome he asked “pardon of the people who were offended by this act”, as if Alexander and his friend had done something wrong. However, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, formerly the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who was removed as its head by Pope Francis without explanation, called the statues “idols.”
Pagan Rituals Denounced
On the EWTN October 24 The World Over show, Cardinal Müller said that “to bring the idols into the church was a grave sin, was a crime against the divine law. The great mistake was to bring the idols into the church, not to put them out, because according to the Law of God Himself – the First Commandment – idolism [idolatry] is a grave sin and not to mix them with the Christian liturgy. To throw it out, can be against human law, but to bring the idols into the Church was a grave sin, a crime against the Divine Law.”Bishop José Luis Azcona of Marajó in the Amazon region confirmed that Pachamama is a pagan goddess and denounced the rituals in the Vatican. In his homily on October 16 in Brazil, he said, “In those rituals there is the devil, there is magic. The invocation of the statues in front of which even some religious have bowed in the Vatican (and I will not mention the religious order to which they belong) is the invocation of the mythical power of Mother Earth, to which they are asking blessings upon humanity or offering gestures of gratitude. These are scandalous demonic sacrileges, especially for the little ones who can’t discern.”
The statements and actions of Pope Francis set a bad example and are scandalous to faithful Catholics. Because of this scandal, many more fundamental Protestants may now believe that Catholics are really and truly idolaters, just like they’ve always said. They can proselytize Amazonians to support their charges and drive them away from the Catholic Church. Moreover, for Pope Francis to imply that the removal of the idols by Alexander and his friend was wrong, is analogous to saying that Jesus was wrong to overturn other people’s tables in the temple without their permission.
See Alexander’s YouTube video testimony here.
So, what is the remedy for this scandal? Jesus King of All Nations said, “I Am the Remedy!”
See How to Practice the Devotion here.
When the prophet Ezekiel was brought In spirit by God into the temple he saw the idols of the house of Israel. Then he saw, “about twenty five men, with their backs to the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east, worshiping the sun toward the east.” Then God said to Ezekiel, “Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it too slight a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here, that they should fill the land with violence, and provoke me further to anger? Lo, they put the branch to their nose. Therefore I will deal in wrath; my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity; and though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them.” (Ezekiel 8:16-18).
Likewise, at the church of Santa Maria during the Amazon Synod, some of the pews were turned around from the altar to face the Pachamama idol. About twenty five people sat upon the pews with their backs to the altar and the Blessed Sacrament with their faces toward the idol. (See the photo from the EWTN October 31 The World Over show.) They sat “with their backs to the Lord’s temple” as did the “about twenty-five men” that Ezekiel saw! Let us not turn our backs to God and face idols, but turn to the one true God, face Him in reparation and implore him to end these sacrileges.
Let us join Bishop Athanasius Schneider who encourages all Catholics to offer prayers and reparation for “the abomination of the veneration of wooden idols perpetrated in Rome during the Amazon Synod.”
Let us pray the Prayer of the Angel of Peace during the Third Apparition of the Angel at Fatima in October 1916. The Angel appeared to the three shepherd children holding a chalice in his hands, with a Host above it from which drops of Blood were falling into the chalice and prayed,
O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference by which He is offended. By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg the conversion of poor sinners.
