Bishop Schneider Publishes Open Letter Condemning Pachamama Idolatry, by Steve Skojec

By Steve Skojec, Founding Publisher and Executive Director, OnePeterFive, Oct. 26, 2019

In a new open letter published today, Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Astana, Kazakhstan, invoking his “ordination as a Catholic bishop and successor to the Apostles,” condemns the use of the pagan “Pachamama” idols in the churches in Rome and praises the “courageous and praiseworthy act” of the “brave Christian gentlemen” who “expelled the wooden idolatrous statues from the Church of Santa Maria in Traspontina in Rome, and threw them into the Tiber.”

“Like a new ‘Maccabees,’” Bishop Schneider writes, “they acted in the spirit of the holy wrath of Our Lord, who expelled the merchants from the temple of Jerusalem with a whip. The gestures of these Christian men will be recorded in the annals of Church history as a heroic act which brought glory to the Christian name, while the acts of high-ranking churchmen, on the contrary, who defiled the Christian name in Rome, will go down in history as cowardly and treacherous acts of ambiguity and syncretism.”