The man who threw the controversial Pachamama statues seen at the Amazon synod into the Tiber published a video explaining the reasons why he did it.
“You shall not make for yourself an idol or a likeness of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth.” – Exodus 20:4
Nearly two weeks ago, footage was anonymously uploaded to YouTube showing the controversial Pachamama statues seen at various events during the Amazon synod being taken from the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina and thrown into the Tiber River.
Later, Pope Francis announced their retrieval of the Pachamama statues and issued an apology for the actions of the two unknown men. Now, the same channel that uploaded the video uploaded another with a man explaining why they did it.
In the video “Why we threw the Pachamama idols into the Tiber river” dated November 4th, Alexander Tschugguel, 26, from Vienna, Austria claims he and another took the five statues from the church because they “saw in those statues and in those idols a break of the First Commandment.”
In Rome covering the Amazon Synod, he spoke to volunteers inside the Santa Maria in Trasponita who said the statuts were “signs of fertility, of Mother Earth, and integral ecology.” He said the synod left him “very disappointed” and was “a big mixture of wrong ideas, social justice, liberation theology,” that “goes hand in hand with the globalist agenda.”
Tschugguel said before going through with it, he consulted with a priest and prayed many rosaries with his wife: “The spiritual preparation was everything.” He rejected the idea his actions was “theft” because “pagan idols” don’t belong in a Church, saying his sole motivation was to “bring pagan things out of a Catholic Church.”
“Please, Holy Father, understand this, as Catholics, we just don’t want pagan things in the Catholic Church. We want our churches to be clean and pure about the Faith and we want the Church to follow Jesus Christ and that’s it.”
He founded the Saint Boniface Institute, an organization for Catholic laymen who want the Church to live out traditional teachings. He is also active on Twitter: @ATschugguel
