Well, no, in fact, they didn't. They looked for records that Rivera said should exist. They don't. Rivera says he was a bishop. He wasn't. He said he was a Jesuit. He wasn't. He said he graduated from a particular seminary. He didn't. He said he was in specific places at specific times. His whereabouts could be checked against secular records. He wasn't where he claimed to be, he didn't do what he claimed he did, he wasn't who he said he was. He's a liar, just as Chick is a liar.
Charles Chiniquy was known as a preacher who helped start the reformation in the Bible belt in the midwest. Yes he said that jesuits killed Abraham Lincoln. Only God can knows if that one was true or not.
Charles Chiniquy was a renegade priest with moral issues, and a liar to boot.
Any idiot who bothers to read history, and isn't full of bigoted, insane foolishness, can see that John Wilkes Booth (not a Catholic, and with no known Catholic connection) killed Lincoln, and he was motivated by Confederate sympathies, not Jesuit ones. The only remote connection any of this has to Catholicism is that the conspirators met in a boarding house owned by a Catholic lady, Mary Suratt. Mrs. Suratt was executed, although all of the conspirators agreed she was innocent.
As I said, Protestantism deserves better than to be defended by liars and reprobates like Chick, Rivera, and Chiniquy.
Again, anyone who wanted to check on Rivera's credentials would have to go to the source who would have them. IF he was once a priest/bishop/Jesuit, and IF he went to a particular seminary, and IF he was in specific places at specific times, and IF he did claimed to do, and IF he tried to claim to be someone people said he wasn't, wouldn't it make sense for the religious organization he was from try to destroy any documented evidence and deny his claims?
Coming from an organization that has tried to cover up claims of sexual abuse of her priests (and I worked with a couple of them who were accused while in the military!) I am not surprised. And if you don't know Jack Chick why do you call him a liar? Try reading what he, and others, have to say. If you don't want to read his books, read others as outlined earlier in this thread.
Charles Chiniquy was a priest who broke away from the catholic institution at the time. If for that you label him a renegrade, well then that's what he was. Of course the same was said about Charles and John Wesley and the Methodist Episcopal movement, B.T. Roberts and the Free Methodist church, Martin Luther and the Lutheran movement, the Anabaptists, etc, etc, etc, but what the hey, lump them all in together huh? And if you accuse him of being a liar because he exposed the dealings of the priests in Chicago at that time then why not read in the papers of the era and see who's telling the truth.
And furthermore, I never mentioned John Wilkes Booth did I?? I think not.
As I said, Protestantism deserves better than to be defended by liars and reprobates like Chick, Rivera, and Chiniquy. To this all I got to is, well, there isn't much to say except, why not add the names I listed earlier and see if that statement stands up.