As a Mission Impossible-style story, with the adrenaline of the moment and having lost communication with the operation leader, without knowing that there was another team acting in parallel, the American priest known as Padre Peregrino published a detailed account of his direct participation in the Pachamama episode that occurred in Rome during the Synod on the Amazon in October 2019. In his text —brief but anecdotal— he assures that his own hands “grabbed the idolatry” while trying to remove one of the figures from the church of Santa María in Traspontina, where various images had been placed that —as he recalls— Vatican personnel later acknowledged to Catholic News Agency that did not represent the Virgin Mary.
According to the priest, his original intention was to collaborate with the author and analyst Dr. Taylor Marshall to remove and throw into the Tiber River the pagan idols introduced into Catholic temples. Marshall, however, canceled his participation at the last minute, which caused a disagreement between them that —he explains— was resolved years later.
Two parallel operations without contact between them
Father Peregrino recounts that, due to the temporary breakdown in communication with Marshall, he was unaware that the latter had sent the activist Alexander Tschugguel to the same church hours earlier, in the early morning of October 21, 2019, to carry out the removal of several statues —an act that resulted in the idols being thrown into the Tiber—. Meanwhile, the priest also traveled to Rome accompanied by a young American and an English layman.
At 9:00 in the morning, the three entered the church using work vests to try to go unnoticed. However, the area was already on “maximum alert”, he recounts, and they were surprised when trying to leave the temple with several images in hand. “We didn’t know we were walking into a high-security situation”, he acknowledges.
The group was carrying body cameras with which they hoped to document the entire action; however, they barely managed to advance before being intercepted by the staff at the location.
“We had to choose between provoking violence or handing over the images”
The priest states that, once stopped at the church exit, they had only two options: push and run, risking being accused of violence, or hand over the figures without resistance. They chose the second option to avoid —he says— Catholics being pointed out as aggressive people. “Perhaps we should have done the opposite”, he reflects in retrospect.
After handing over the images, they managed to escape through a back door where a support car was waiting to flee. Minutes later, in a café, they learned that Tschugguel had successfully carried out his operation three hours earlier, destroying several of the figures.
The priest states that he then understood why, according to Marshall, “it would have been the end” of his ministry if he had carried out the action: a priest would face much greater consequences than a layman.
Why he publishes the recording six years later
Father Peregrino assures that he decides to make the recording public now —which remained six years as an unlisted video— because “one part had forgotten that this happened” and another part “did not feel safe publishing it while a certain person was still alive” —referring to Francis—.
He acknowledges that the recording is “more embarrassing than glorious”, but considers it necessary to show that, in the face of the presence of pagan images in Catholic temples, he and others tried to act.