Alexander Chugel is the man who led the effort to expel the Pachamama statues from the Church in Rome, an act which has been proclaimed heroic by Cardinal Brandt, Bishop Schneider, and others. In this interview, he explains why he did so, what motivated him to do so, and why he felt compelled to act.
00:04:58.740And then I managed to, together with my friends, I converted when I was 15, and I got many friends, and they really awoke my interest in the Catholic religion.
00:05:11.180So I tried to read many things and to talk with priests and to visit speeches and conferences.
00:05:17.520And the more I got into the Catholic Church, the more beautiful it got.
00:05:20.640So for me, the faith is something fantastic, because it really shows us the beauty God gave us, not only through his creation and the beauty we see every day in nature and other people's faces.
00:05:33.400It's also the beauty of his religion, which is completely clear and wonderful.
00:05:39.120And I really love to be a Catholic, actually.
00:05:42.080I have to admit, I cannot imagine anymore not being one.
00:07:28.560To minimize the chance of things interrupting our plans, we went to the church in the second it opened in the morning.
00:07:40.240And yes, we thought about the charges.
00:07:43.000We thought about maybe being charged for theft or so on.
00:07:46.540But first of all, I don't want to take the statues and use them by myself.
00:07:52.260So I don't get anything by taking the statues.
00:07:57.920And I didn't even want to do a big show with them.
00:08:03.180I just wanted to get a pagan idol out of the church.
00:08:06.640If there are any legal consequences, I'm going to face them with the same calm and hopefully braying way I faced the problem of some statues within the church.
00:08:21.760So let's have a look at what really is going to happen.
00:10:38.160We did it for them because we want them to have the truth of Christ too.
00:10:42.680We don't want them to have a special not-Christian religion, which is established even by our own church.
00:10:50.240No, we want them to get baptized and to feel and see the whole band of the whole Catholic spirituality and the world and everything, the whole teaching.
00:11:01.800So I think it is, if he really thinks that we did it out of another reason than the reason I gave you a few minutes ago,
00:11:14.180then I just have to tell our Holy Father, please, Holy Father, understand us.
00:11:19.160We as Catholics, we just don't want pagan things within a Catholic church.
00:11:24.600We want our church to be clear and pure about the faith, and we want the church to follow Jesus Christ and what he said.
00:17:10.640Now, you've actually been following the Synod very closely.
00:17:15.260So what I ask then, what are your thoughts on the Synod, the way it progressed, and the outcome?
00:17:21.300Yeah, my thoughts on the Synod, of course, I was very disappointed.
00:17:25.180When I first heard of the Synod, I was really afraid because I thought, oh my God, what's happening next, you know?
00:17:31.760So, and then I saw the Synod will be about women being ordained.
00:17:36.220The Synod will be about an own Amazonian rite that will be about married priests and so on.
00:17:42.880So I already saw, okay, the points, we all know the issues that are being brought up by fellow Christians who are unfortunately not on our side,
00:17:52.320but rather leftist in the Church, they are coming again.
00:17:57.280Then I thought, you know, why are they talking about the priesthood, for example?
00:18:01.460John Paul II said everything to it, what had to be said.
00:18:06.000And the Church tradition already had, you know, already fixed that for us, so we don't have to discuss it anymore.
00:18:51.660It's a little bit, you know, some people who defend communism even went there.
00:18:56.400The liberation theology came up again.
00:18:58.440And all the liberation theologians were present on pictures standing next to the table where even our Holy Father sat during the Synod.
00:19:07.200So I saw that this is a big mixture of wrong ideas.
00:19:11.400And even though I expected it to be even more of a bomb at the end when I saw the document,
00:19:20.000they brought, they tried to bring through a few points.
00:19:22.780And I know the Synod is only there to give advice to the Pope.
00:19:26.600But, you know, for example, in Germany, they already said we now have to use the Amazon paper and try to establish it in Germany, for example.
00:20:14.480Where can people learn about it and sign up to it?
00:20:16.760Yes, we founded it directly after we did what we did.
00:20:21.840The St. Boniface Institute has the purpose to be the voice of Catholic laymen and, of course, also clergy, but mainly laymen who want to speak up, who want to live, who want to have the church living a traditional way of our faith.
00:20:37.960The way the Catholic Church was always built, so up on the tradition and the scripture, not only the scripture.
00:20:45.340And therefore, we founded this institute.
00:20:48.460We already have a homepage, but the homepage is very easy and not too elaborated right now.
00:20:53.600So I will provide you the link and then you can click on it.
00:20:57.520And we have a Patreon page for people if they say they want to help us financially, you know, because maybe they tried to charge us and so on.
00:21:06.140And it would be very nice if we see that we have the support from all the world, of course.
00:21:11.060So this is what we did and our idea is not to be quiet anymore.
00:21:14.340You know, when we first did the video, we said we don't want to come out with our faces because we wanted the people to talk about what happens in the video and what we do and not about who did it.
00:21:28.980And now, after the Synod, we think it is very important that the people know who did it because as a Catholic, I think we should always fight with our faces seen.
00:21:39.440Because the people should know who we are and the people should know that we fight there with our whole personality, not only in anonymity.
00:22:20.880But you moved in a, you know, from this thought of something to do something to action in a very hard thing to do.
00:22:29.760How would you encourage other young people to move from sort of thought to action in this way of something that is spiritually good and a good thing to do, but they might be reticent to do because of the hardship or something that it would cause?
00:22:46.960Nowadays, we have tons of possibilities to do that.
00:22:51.400You know, it is not only fighting for God if you throw out Pachamamos of a Catholic Church and throw them into the Thai, but there are other possibilities too.
00:22:59.860The first thing is, visit your local traditional church.
00:23:05.960The best you can get is the most traditional you can get.
00:23:11.200Visit them, pray tons of rosaries and really try to get into a good prayer and good people telling you about the philosophy and the history of the church.
00:23:20.080Try to really know what you are talking about.
00:23:23.160Then go out there and talk with other people.
00:23:25.680Go to maybe your home parish, your family, your friends.