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Orthodox Extremist Equals Charismatic Revival to Liberation Theology By Julio Severo Does Liberation Theology equal to a charismatic revival? No way. In fact, the best opposition to Liberation Theology has come from charismatic, Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal Christians. Yet, enemies of charismatic revivals will use any excuse to attack what the Holy Spirit is doing in our days. Recently, a radical Orthodox Christian in an article entitled “Liberation Theology — a KGB Invention?” said: “This is where everything comes full-circle, and really shows that everything that seems opposed is really of the same! It certainly explains a lot, and also...

Maranatha First Baptist Church is one of the largest congregations in Holguín, Cuba . . In early May Pastor Amado Ramírez Oliveros reported the long-awaited answer: Cuban authorities not only denied the construction permit, they announced the government is seizing the property that has belonged to the Eastern Baptist Convention since 1947. Maranatha will be forced to pay an unannounced amount of “rent” if it wants to remain in its building.

At Mosque, Brazil Celebrates First Place in Religious Freedom Brazil ahead of the United States in religious freedom, according to Pew Research Center By Julio Severo Brazil lost the world soccer cup last year, but at least it is being celebrated for achieving the first place in religious freedom in late April, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, in a report by the Religious News Service. On April 29, Latin America’s largest and oldest mosque, Mesquita Brasil, brought some 700 leaders together for its Celebration of Religious Freedom where Muslims, Afro-Brazilian (similar to voodoo) adherents, Mormons, Sikhs,...

Putin and the Neoconservatives By William Pfaff Comment by Julio Severo: This article was kindly sent and recommended to me by a Pentecostal minister in the U.S. Its author, William Pfaff, said, “The resemblance of President Putin’s ambitions for his Russia to those of the neoconservatives in the contemporary United States bear a striking formal resemblance in the wish of both to recall a romanticized past.” For pro-family Christians, the important point is whether a president supports a pro-family agenda or anti-family agenda. We supported George W. Bush because of his generally pro-life stances, even though his neocon decision...

Liberation Theology, a KGB Invention? That Is Way Too Simple... Luiz Sérgio Solimeo Preface by Julio Severo: Recently, a former communist from Romania said that Liberation Theology, which is predominant in Latin America, was exclusively created by the KGB. I do not doubt the KGB’s malevolence, but other voices, especially from Latin America, can shed a better light on this issue. Luiz Sérgio Solimeo is a conservative Catholic Brazilian who has written an insightful article in Portuguese about Liberation Theology, and I have asked him to translate it into English. To further help our understanding, I mention an interesting...

If the Soviet bloc wasn't the mother of liberation theology, it was certainly a sinister stepmother, enlisting Catholics in a geopolitical cause and inviting them to sell their souls for funding and support. Only the naïve can disregard the mountain of evidence connecting liberation theology with Soviet action in the region.

The pope’s closest adviser on Tuesday slammed climate-change skeptics, blaming capitalist motivations from “movements in the United States” for opposing the Catholic Church leader’s upcoming environmental letter. “The ideology surrounding environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits,” said Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga at a news conference in Rome marking the start of Caritas Internationalis, an annual meeting of Catholic charitable groups, according to The Boston Globe. Pope Francis is expected to issue his encyclical letter on the environment this year, and Rodríguez...

A high-ranking communist official who defected to the United States in the 1970s now says the Soviet KGB was behind the tidal wave of “liberation theology” that swept through Catholic countries in Latin America before the opposition of Pope John Paul II effectively ended the movement. Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former three-star general in Romania's Securitate, or secret police, said he first learned of liberation theology during meetings with Nikita Khrushchev and General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, then chief director of the KGB, when Sakharovsky accompanied the Soviet premier on a six-day visit to Romania in October of 1959. “Khrushchev wanted to...

Black Panther leaders are planning ways to make the chaos last and spread across the nation. Two leaders of the New Black Panther Party, Chief of Staff Michelle Williams and King Samir Shabazz, are calling Baltimore rioters for even more violence against whites. (SNIP) During an appearance on Shabazz’s radio show, Williams regularly made fun of “crackers” and black conservatives. Agreeing with her, Shabazz went a step further and made a terrifying threat: he called on blacks to firebomb nurseries so that they can kill as many white babies as possible. Shabazz added that this was a good suggestion because...

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has extended an invitation to Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, and to Israeli President, Shimon Peres, to come to the Vatican and join him in praying to God for the gift of peace. “I offer my home in the Vatican as a place for this encounter of prayer”, said the Pope. “In this, the birthplace of the Prince of Peace”, said Pope Francis,” I wish to invite you, President Mahmoud Abbas, together with President Shimon Peres, to join me in heartfelt prayer to God for the gift of peace. I offer my home in the Vatican as...

The Palestinian Authority (PA) plans to modify history by modifying classical art, in an exhibit it commissioned to show Pope Francis during his visit to Bethlehem next Sunday, which presents Jesus as a “suffering Palestinian.” The Palestinian Museum arranged exhibit features an array of collages mixing classical paintings of Christian art with photographs of what are to be taken as “oppressed” Palestinians. […] One work on the display is a modification of Raphael’s “The Deposition” (1507), which depicts the dead Jesus being brought to his tomb. The PA version weaves in a wounded Arab man being carried away as an...

Exhibit shows parts of classical paintings of biblical scenes merged with photos of Palestinians. Official PA presidential committee requested the exhibit. For Pope Francis' visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority next week, the PA has commissioned an art exhibit that includes works of art portraying Palestinians as Jesus. The exhibit consists of visual displays merging classical paintings of biblical scenes with photos of Palestinians and have been "designed by the Palestinian Museum at the request of the Presidential Higher Committee for Church Affairs." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 20, 2014] As Palestinian Media Watch has documented, the PA has misrepresented Jesus...

Pope Francis and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traded words on Monday over the language spoken by Jesus two millennia ago. "Jesus was here, in this land. He spoke Hebrew," Netanyahu told Francis, at a public meeting in Jerusalem in which the Israeli leader cited a strong connection between Judaism and Christianity. "Aramaic," the pope interjected. "He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew," Netanyahu shot back. Like many things in the Middle East, where the pope is on the last leg of a three-day visit, modern-day discourse about Jesus is complicated and often political. A Jew, Jesus was born in...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman were right when they blamed the noxious anti-Israel incitement rampant in Europe for Saturday's murderous shooting attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels >>SNIP<< Pope Benedict XVI was perceived as a friend of Israel, despite his childhood membership in the Hitler Youth. His opposition to Islam's rejection of reason, eloquently expressed at his speech at the University of Regensburg in 2006, positioned him as a religious champion of reason, individual responsibility and law — Judaism's primary contributions to humanity. His predecessor Pope John Paul II was less willing to confront Islamic...

Pope Francis delivered a powerful boost of support to the Palestinians during a Holy Land pilgrimage Sunday, repeatedly backing their statehood aspirations, praying solemnly at Israel’s controversial separation barrier and calling the stalemate in peace efforts “unacceptable.” Palestinian officials hailed Francis’ decision to refer to the “state of Palestine.” In its official program, the Vatican referred to President Mahmoud Abbas as the president of the “state of Palestine,” and his Bethlehem office as the “presidential palace.” He pointedly called Abbas a “man of peace.” ... “Coming to Bethlehem and flying to Bethlehem from Jordan shows solidarity with the Palestinian people,...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Pope Francis delivered a powerful boost of support to the Palestinians during a Holy Land pilgrimage Sunday, repeatedly backing their statehood aspirations, praying solemnly at Israel's controversial separation barrier and calling the stalemate in peace efforts "unacceptable." -snip- Palestinian officials hailed Francis' decision to refer to the "state of Palestine." In its official program, the Vatican referred to President Mahmoud Abbas as the president of the "state of Palestine," and his Bethlehem office as the "presidential palace." He pointedly called Abbas a "man of peace." -snip-

In a startling new interview, a 3-star general and former head of Communist Romania’s secret police who defected to the United States in 1978, claims that the Theology of Liberation was the creation of the KGB, who exported it to Latin America as a way of introducing Marxism into the continent. Ion Mihai Pacepa has been called “the Cold War’s most important defector,” and after his defection, the Romanian government under Nicolae Ceausescu placed two death sentences and a $2 million bounty on his head. During the more than ten years that Pacepa worked with the CIA, he made what...

Ion Mihai Pacepa on Raul Castro's yacht in Cuba, 1974. Photo courtesy of Ion Mihai Pacepa. Washington D.C., May 1, 2015 / 03:34 pm (CNA).- Espionage deep in the heart of Europe. Secrets in the KGB. Defection from a communist nation. Ion Mihai Pacepa has seen his share of excitement, serving as general for Communist Romania’s secret police before defecting to the United States in the late 1970s. The highest-ranking defector from communism in the ‘70s, he spoke to CNA recently about the connection between the Soviet Union and Liberation Theology in Latin America. Below are excerpts of the interview....

Writing for National Review, Ion Mihai Pacepa explains that, "Liberation theology, of which not much has been heard for two decades, is back in the news. But what is not being mentioned is its origins. It was not invented by Latin American Catholics. It was developed by the KGB. The man who is now the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, secretly worked for the KGB under the code name “Mikhailov” and spent four decades promoting liberation theology, which we at the top of the Eastern European intelligence community nicknamed Christianized Marxism." See here. Rita Biesemans, in a...

History often repeats itself, and if you have lived two lives, as I have done, you have a good chance of seeing the reenactment with your own eyes. Liberation theology, of which not much has been heard for two decades, is back in the news. But what is not being mentioned is its origins. It was not invented by Latin American Catholics. It was developed by the KGB. The man who is now the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, secretly worked for the KGB under the code name “Mikhailov” and spent four decades promoting liberation theology, which...