There is no religion throughout the history of humanity that does not include miracles in its mythology. The belief in supernatural events, digitized by a divine entity, is present in different traditions, from ancient Greece to the present day. However, what Pastor Jorge Ledesma achieved is something that literally has no precedents. “The Apostle”, as called, was one day to open its security box in a bank, where it had deposited 100 thousand pesos, only to discover that, magical intervention through, the tickets had been transformed into dollars. God did it.
It is far from being the only supernatural event that happened to the pastor. In fact, there are so many miracles that he witnessed or that he managed to materialize that he cannot tell them. The “International Christian Church”, which he founded with his wife Alicia in 1994, boasts of having made “thousands.” In fact, only on Saturday 5, the day a president of the Nation for the first time inaugurated an evangelical temple -“Portal del Cielo”, with the presence of Javier Milei-, nothing less than 400 “certified miracles” happened. The forces of heaven achieved, once again, the impossible.
Trust God and he will do
That is the motto of the Church that presides over Ledesma. The pastor has something in his favor: he asked and God did. When he founded his congregation were nothing more than 12 people, among whom he and his wife were counted. Today its church has the largest temple in the entire country -with the capacity for 15 thousand people seated, a construction that is estimated to cost between 50 and 100 million dollars -but also much more than that. They are in charge of a network of dining rooms and professionals such as doctors, hairdressers and social workers who make available to their faithful. If it were not for the small detail that they are a religious organization, one could say that they look like a company and not precisely a small one.
The main contribution with which they are supported and grow is, like all evangelical communities, the tithe of part of their faithful. That is, voluntary contributions in cash that are made in each of the “services” that Ledesma or any of his children officiates. Will all donations be declared? Or will it be like the miraculous case of the weights that became dollars?
Anyway, what is clear is that the growth they had was exponential. And that they always had some connection with politics. In Chaco, the first time the Ledesma began to awaken some attention in the red circle was through the proximity with one of its governors, and not an especially libertarian.
Jorge Capanich, twice at the head of that province, had a great link with the Ledesma. In fact, thanks to the thrust of, among others, the shepherd and his family, was that Capitanich created for the first time a provincial direction. As with the homologous version of this dependency nationwide, all the cults that are registered within it receive tax exemptions. It was a productive relationship for both: the two elections in which Capitanich triumphed had a good performance among evangelical voters. Was all the work of the Lord?
The forces of heaven
It should be clarified that the special attention that the former chief of Cristina Kirchner’s cabinet had to this sector was not only his, something that can also prove the presence of Leandro Zdero, current governor, in the event that Ledesma starred and to which Milei was also. It is that, according to the statistics of the sociologist and researcher Fortunato Mallimacci, 15% of the Argentine population is evangelical. The data of Mallimacci, of 2019, are especially attendable for a comparison: in 2008, when he and his team did the previous survey, the evangelicals were 9% of the country. Growth is exponential, and the last numbers are six years ago.
Ledesma and his church are registered within a particular branch of evangelism, the Pentecostals. They differ from the rest for giving special attention to the direct presence of the Holy Spirit – “today the Lord is here, in the portal of heaven,” Ledesma repeated the day that was Milei- and, above all, by the constant presence of non -earthly events. “Invasion of the supernatural” is, in fact, the title of one of the three books that the pastor wrote. And what has cases to count: Beyond the magical conversion to the dollars -which charged so much media relevance that the resistance prosecutor, Patricio Sabadini, decided to open a preliminary investigation for alleged money laundering -, on tens of occasions they made magical cures.
That wide range of miracles covers from walking a person who entered the temple in a wheelchair, going through how they did to recover the audition to a deaf person to a case that managed to make a woman grow a finger that was missing, who even returned with the same nail polish as the rest. Pastor himself has also told cases of how in a ceremony he managed to convert a plastic ring into one of diamonds. With this precious stone it is seen that it has some particular connection: in its networks he advertised in 2012 that through a “supernatural prayer” a “precious diamond” appeared, something that was repeated three times more in those years.
In fact, there is so much the power of his prayers that the pastor has come to Chaco a school of “supernatural finances” that he teaches how to make money to get out of poverty.
The forces of heaven
Milei and Pastor Ledesma directly fixed among them the president’s visit. In fact, in Chaco the provincial authorities learned of the presidential visit when the Military House, which depends on the general secretary of the Presidency, began to make the inquiries for the security operation. Ledesma is one of the men in the world of religion with which the president has direct treatment. They are not so many, and the event confirmed that the evangelical pastor has a good link with the president. In his temple the libertarian made a very hard speech: he said that the State is literally an invention of the devil, and criticized social justice again.
That statement earned some answers from the religious world. “Using the Bible to bless the ‘salvénse who can’ is not faith: it is populist marketing disguised as a gospel. Faith without reason is fanaticism, and freedom without justice, pure selfishness with religious name,” said the bishop of Avellaneda-Lanús, Marcelo Margni.
As this magazine has been recounted, it is not at all a coincidence that Milei turns to these religious events again and again: he believes to be a chosen by a superior entity, which entrusted to him in 2020 the “mission” of being president, and the mystical rhetoric has been taking his story.
In fact, the day he assumed the presidency, in 2023, among the men of religion who officiated an “interreligious mass” there was an evangelical pastor. Not only that: two deputies of freedom progress come from this world. Legislator Nadia Márquez is daughter Hugo, evangelical pastor and vice president of Aciera, the organization that brings together evangelical entities; And the libertarian deputy Jorge Santiago Pauli has a pastor wife. The forces of heaven act in mysterious ways. The president, now, added an evangelical leg to his political and mysitic adventure. What will be the next step?
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