Saturday, August 27, 2016

POOR FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND GREAT FRANCIS (KIKO) ARGÜELLO

Posted by LaPaz, Jungle Watch correspondent from Spain.

Luis Astúriz is a Jesuit who uses to write about an actual famous person through a letter supposedly sent from another famous one in the past. For example, he wrote a letter for actual Pope Francis as it was sent from another jesuit, Cardinal Martini, from Heaven. This time, Luis Astúriz elected Saint Francis of Assisi to send a letter to Francisco, Kiko, Argüello. It was published in 2013 in Zoomnews, but til now things stay the same. It could be said loudest but not clearest.

"Brother Francisco, I am your brother Francisco.

I do not know if you remember me. Sometimes almost certain you don't.

But my heart aches for you. I do not know where you are going or where do you take all those people walking behind you, even when they will run whereever you send them. I do not know why do you gives them orders. Or what for.



We started about the same, remember. I came from a very influential family of Assisi. You, too, although from Leon in Spain. From my youth, I was a gulf and a banner, the same as you. I did not know paint or play the guitar: you, the view is, either. One day, on a trip to Apua, I suffered a crisis, I realized that my life had no meaning and gave myself to God and the service of the poor. You lived something like that. You took a guitar (that was a mistake, my brother, was a mistake), you left your home and you went into a shanty town to see if you could find God.


But today I think we found different things. I just saw you on that show you ride every December in a large square of Madrid, that meeting you do for shouting against ones and each others under the pretext of saving families, and I do not recognize anything of what I said, what I thought or what I dreamed. I understand nothing, brother Kiko.

I always looked for humility, it helps those who had nothing, poverty and sacrifice, as Jesus taught us. You ... look at yourself in the mirror: your great sin, brother Kiko, is vanity, ambition, brightness. The arrogance. Being recognized, praised, by crowds who come together to put themselves at your feet, who admire you and especially to obey you.



A bishop who asked me for money I gave him everything I had, even my clothes, because I was naked before him he had to cover myself with his cloak. You organize gigantic scenarios, you delight with gold and incense and icons, you rub shoulders with the great, you feed the adulation of others. When the Order I founded, called the Friars Minor, began to grow, there was a cardinal, the powerful Ugolino of Segni (later Pope), who offered me to appoint some of my Poverelli cardinals I said no. If my brothers were called Friars Minor was because they would not become great, and I asked them to never, ever, would consent to any of them to become bishop.


Saint Francis of Assisi, by Zurbarán

And you, brother Kiko? You command on the cardinals, the bishops and the Pope himself, whom you censures in your media when He says something you do not like or when correcting your ambition; whom you despise and ridicule, by remembering once He was your German translator. There is nothing that makes you happier than seeing the bishops and cardinals to attend, submissive, your shows and listening to your speeches. You bring them here, you carry them there ... and they pay attention to you because they know that you fill with people their stadiums and squares. They do not admire you: they fear you because you are very powerful, and they feign affection -far from really feeling it- to avoid you could turn on against them. I was pierced by the love of God, which was the love for the poorest. You go crazy by power.



I was worried about the strength of the beliefs of each one. You are obssesed with the number of those who follow you or come to your shows. Must be thousands, hundreds of thousands. And if they are not, you say yes they are. And you force your people to believe in you.


St. Francis holding JesusChrist, by Murillo

I preached a lot, but my message was always the same: be humble, love your neighbor, help those who have nothing and trust in the goodness of man. You, brother Kiko, give speeches full of fear, threats, invective, of harangues against those who do not think like you; in the same paragraph you shout that Christ is risen and immediately afterwards you equally whip to those who divorce, those who kill, the death camps, those who burn cars, the incest and the TV. You say the first thing that comes to your mind. You reflect your fears in your words, not your love or your charity. You've created a jumbled and wordy speech that does not make sense, though is spiced with words about salvation and faith. And forgive me if I tell you this, brother Kiko, but you are unbearable, very unbearable. More yet than that Pope Innocent, that Lotario di Segni of my sins, that no man could never bear him. But you, nobody tells you to shut up.

Kiko's crowds in Madrid

I liked writing and simple as I was, I wrote simple things, like the Canticle of Creatures, in which I called 'my brothers' animals, the sun, the moon, my enemies and death itself. You have come to create an entire symphony orchestra to take over the world one of the examples of saddest pride I know: your Suffering of the innocents, a work of great sadness you invented with what that very few you know about guitar and which one of your acolytes, musician, had to orchestrate to resemble what is not. And you do not realize that the really innocent ones who suffer are those who hear it there, because it is bad, heavy, clumsy and hopeless. Some say that your "symphony" is unbearable even for the same God. It is not a blasphemy: I know it, because I often see Him and believe me: He is fed up with your so empty vanity. As well happens with many of those who flatter you. But nobody tells you either.

That's the worst, brother Kiko: you do not have anyone around you to tell you the truth. The most beloved of my first friars was Brother Leo, who was my confessor and my whip, I was always warned by him against the danger of false humility. You do not have anyone like that. You will not accept it. After pride, your worst sin is anger. Nobody contradicts you because they are afraid of you.

I invented a congregation of humble friars. You have created a power structure. A cult within the Church. A cult created, like all others, not for the greater glory of God, but yours, for your personality cult; a cult that, also as all, controls immense fortunes given for you, guileless, by your followers, and nobody knows where they end, while I was begging. A cult where you teach that outside are only unhappiness, loneliness and of course the devil, and that's not true. Not a cult of believers, but obedients of your will. Like all cults.


I do not know who is the God you belive, brother Kiko. Mine, I do not recognize Him in your words, in your threats, in your arrogance and, above all, in your music, it does not move to joy and love but to somnolence.

I would ask you  for one thing: leave everything, Kiko Arguello. If you really believe in what you say, if you really believe in that Jesus whom you name so much (I think in vain), who had nowhere to lay his head, get thee to a convent, or to a charity kitchen, or to a charity clinic in Africa; roll up your sleeves and get to heal the wounds of lepers, as I did, or to clean the asses of children who die of AIDS. But do it you alone, without your orchestra or your bishops and your court sycophants or your fans. There you will find the true Way. There you will lose your desire to offend and threaten those who think differently from yours.

If you do, God bless you. I'm sure He will".

Signed: Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)
Transcription by LUIS ASTÚRIZ
Original in Spanish: http://www.zoomnews.es/zoom-plus/retrato/kiko-argueello


3 comments:

  1. LaPaz,

    Thank you for your translation and the opportunity to know about this "letter".
    The message is clear, specially if we only imagine to compare Francis of Assisi and Francisco, Kiko, Argüello: two person in antithesis.
    Father Luis Astúriz reminds me a beautiful book written by pope Albino Luciani where he used the same way to write to many writers alredy died.

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  2. Beautiful and true. Kiko is in love with power.

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  3. God help Kiko Arguello.

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