Today, it is 60 years since the death of the most loved and hated woman of Argentina.
We’ve heard a lot about her, good and bad things.
Though I grew up in anti-peronist family, it deeply respected Eva Peron and what she did. But it also criticized her ways…
Perhaps, due to my calling to the Christian ministry and because I faced the same hypocrisies and atrocities that she had to face, I understand her ways.
I have always admired the fact that a 26-year-old woman, with all the flightiness of an actress, embraces with such passion her vocation for the people instead of enjoying the favours of being the wife of the most popular president of Argentina.
I would like that with any previous judgement or passion you can read these words which are part of her last writings, when in 1952 her days were coming to an end.
Read it with the reason and let it go down to the heart.
I am not peronist. I never was peronist because of their internal and unexplainable controversies.
I am a Pastor and my place in life is to be with the people.
I speak, think, work and live for Him, with a passion that has grown enormously in these 33 years that I have been serving JESUS and the people. My life wouldn’t have any sense if I didn’t do what I do.
That is why, I feel so identify with these word. I have chosen a picture of Evita in which her cheeky look is expressing some complicity…
I just hope that beyond all posture or absence of it, this message awakens in you soul the same that awakens in mine.
Guillermo Prein
THE CLERICAL HIERARCHIES
Among the coldest men of my time, I highlight the clerical hierarchies, most of whom have an unconceivable indifference in views of the reality of the suffering people. I declare with absolute sincerity that these words, which express the hard truth, hurt me like a disappointment.
I haven’t seen generosity or love but as an exception among the extraordinary dignitaries of the clergy… as it deserved from them the doctrine of Christ, which inspired the doctrine of Perón.
I have only seen in them mean and selfish interests and a sordid ambition to get privileges.
I accuse them from my indignity, no for bad but for good. I don’t reproach them for having fought silently against Perón in their secret meetings with the oligarchy. I don’t reproach them for having been unthankful with Perón, who gave the best good willingness and faith from his Christian heart. I reproach them for dumping the poor, the humble, and the shirtless, the sick, and having preferred instead the glory and the honours of the oligarchy.
I reproach them for having betrayed Christ who had mercy of the mob. I reproach them for forgetting the people and having done as much as possible to hide the name and figure of Christ behind the smokescreen from the incense.
I am and I feel a Christian. I am catholic, but I don’t understand that the religion of Christ can be compatible with the oligarchy and the privilege.
I will never understand that.
The clergy of the new times must convert to Christianity if they want to save the world from the spiritual destruction.
They should start by descending to be with the people.
Like Christ, they should live with the people, suffer with the people, and feel with the people.
Due to the fact that they don’t live, or suffer, or feel, or think like the people, these years of Perón have become a burden to their hearts without awakening a single resonance. They have a closed and cold heart.
Ah! If they new what a nice thing is to be with the people, they would through themselves to win it for Christ, who today and always is and will be mercy of the masses!
THE RELIGION
Christ asked them to evangelize the poor and they should have never abandoned the people where there is the huge and oppressed mass of poor.
The clerical politicians of all times and of all countries want to dominate and exploit the people through the church and the religion.
Many times, for the disgrace of faith, the clergy has served the politicians, enemies of the people, preaching a stupid resignation… I don’t know yet how that can be conciliated with human dignity, or with the thirst for justice whose beatitudes are sung in the gospel.
Also, the political clergy pretends to dominate in all countries and yet to exploit the people through the government, which is also dangerous for the happiness of the people.
The two: the political clericalism and the clerical policy must be avoided by the peoples of the world if they want to be happy some time.
I don’t think, like Lenin, that religion would be the opium of the people.
The religion must be instead the liberation of the peoples; because when the man face God he reaches the heights of his extraordinary dignity.
If there was no God, if we weren’t destined to God, if there were no religion, the man would be a little of dust spread in the abyss of eternity. But God exists and for Him we are worthy, and for Him we are equal and before Him no one have privileges over anyone. We are all equal!
I don’t understand then why, in the name of religion and in the name of God, they can preach about resignation before injustice. Neither why it is not possible to claim, in the name of God and in the name of religion, for those supreme rights to justice and freedom. The religion should be never an instrument of oppression. It should be a rebelliousness flag. The religion is in the soul of the peoples because the peoples live near of God, in contact with the clean air of immensity.
No one can prevent the people from having faith. If they lost it, the whole humanity would be lost forever.
I rebel against “religions” that make the men lower their foreheads and depress the soul of the peoples. That can’t be religion. The religion must raise the men’s head. I admire the religion that can make a humble shirtless man say before an emperor: “I am, as you are, a Son of God!”
The religion will have again its prestige among the people if their preachers teach it as a rebel an equal force, not as an instrument of oppression.
To preach about resignation is to preach about slavery.
Instead, it is necessary to preach about freedom and justice.
It is the love the only way through which the religion will be able to see the day of the peoples!
THE WAYS AND PRINCIPLES
I live with my heart right next to my peoples’ heart and for that I know every beat of them.
I know how it feels, how it thinks, and how it suffers. I know that it has been deceived many times and in religious matters it has too many prejudice and accept many mistakes.
I don’t feel authorized to judge over this transcendental matter.
My message is addressed to awakening the soul of the peoples in front of the many ways of oppression and one of those ways is what religion uses as an instrument of slavery.
The peoples must defend the religious feeling and for that reason all its deformations claim an unforgettable sentence.
I think that those who believe that religion is a collection of external formalities have done a lot of damage, as well as those who don’t see anything else but principles of absolute inflexibility. The religion is for the human being and not the human being for the religion. And for that reason, the religion must be deeply human and deeply popular.
The religion should be as it was in the past, in order to be deeply popular. It should speak the language of the heart again, that is the language of the people. Forgetting the excessive rituals and the theological comparisons, which are also excessive.
When you speak to the people in a simple way and with love, they accept the truth you are offering, and with much more faith if you preach them with your example.
Unfortunately, our people and maybe all the peoples in earth have only seen bad interest in the preachers of faith, and for that reason they have closed their hearts to them.
THE PEOPLES AND GOD
Many times, in these years of my life, I have thought about how distant were certain preachers and apostles from the religion of the peoples’ heart… why the coldness and selfishness of their souls could not spread or sow in peoples’ soul the fervour of faith, which is burning fire.
I know, –and I say it with all the strength of my spirit- the people are thirsty for God.
And I also know how much some humble preachers work to calm that thirst. My accusation is not against those ones, but against those who because of selfishness or vanity, arrogance, interest or any other unworthy reason to the cause that they claim to defend move people away from the truth, closing the path of God to them.
Some day, God will demand to them the exact count of their betrayals, with much more severity than to those who with less theology, but more love, decided to give everything for the people, with all the soul and with all the heart.
Eva Duarte de Perón, 1952
“Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.” Jeremiah 9:23-24