News of the Restless

“Can’t you hear my lambs calling?

O Good Shepherd, feed my sheep…”

No, that’s not Beelzebub…but it IS one of his earthly lieutenants, disguised as a man of God. Meet Baltazar Porras, whited sepulchre, skirt-chaser and putschist extraordinaire…

While a massive baby-mama drama swirls in Paraguay around President Lugo, an ex-bishop now accused of having had numerous affairs and love-children, some while still under clerical vows (see Otto and BoRev for more), a far scummier man of the cloth is getting away with the same things (and murder!) in Venezuela. But Bolivarian historian José Sant Roz is on his case, and recently gave an interview about what he found:

Q. On what basis do you say that Bishop Baltazar Porras has had children?

A. Really, Baltazar is a man born to be a socialite, and tales of his dissipated lifestyle are rampant throughout the state of Mérida. In the year 2000, Giandoménico Puliti, who was lamentably killed by assassins with a bullet to the head, and I were gathering information for the book “Bishops and Demons”. We visited with many local priests to get to know the church in Mérida from the inside. We can’t reveal the names of these priests, who are meritorious and have had nothing to do with politics. Nevertheless, all of them agreed that the conduct of Porras was the furthest thing from that of a spiritual man who cared for his parishioners. On the contrary, his passions were bullfights, soccer and partying. His “pastoral visits” consisted mainly of frequenting the homes of the rich, sprinkling holy water in banks and resorts, and travelling all over Europe. A priest with close ties to him told us that Baltazar Porras had a son, conceived while he was living in Calabozo, and that the boy frequently visited the archbishop at his palace. In those days, too, there was a novel out in Mérida by the poet Pedro Pablo Pereira, titled “The Archbishop’s Mistress”, which treated of Baltazar’s life, and I can assure you that it caused a great sensation and impact in all of Venezuela. In it you can find much more information about this point.

Q. How could he lead such a disordered life while acting as Archbishop of Mérida?

A. Baltazar’s friends are all guys with no culture, dedicated to partisan politics and mercantile activities. A close friend of his is the ex-governor William Dávila Barrios, along with all those mediocre professors who have been rectors at ULA [the University of Los Andes]. The Mérida bourgeoisie are certainly none of them gentlemen, and all they care about is booze and fine cooking. When I went with Puliti to find out more about these bishops, another priest very involved in the Curia told us that they held orgies there, and added that a group of students were completing a series of procedures to accuse Don Baltazar in Rome. They practically had videos of it! Thanks to all these barbarities, Monsignor Porras lost the friendship of respectable padres such as Hugo Anzil and Ramón Flores.

Q. And do you not believe this son of Porras can come forward to speak out?

A. I doubt it. He has to be very closely guarded, and now he’s a man of 27 years of age. He won’t talk because Porras doesn’t have the power that Bishop Lugo does in Paraguay to give out cushy jobs, privileges and diplomatic missions. He still makes out in public that he is a celibate, while with Lugo, everyone is disputing it because now he is no longer a bishop. And his ex-girlfriends have every right to complain of his ingratitude. Baltazar is only a bishop, who could be of more help to his sons on the quiet from his throne. And surely the mother of this youngster has suffered much. Better to keep quiet about these things. Because if other mistresses and children of Porras were to speak out, immediately the media would mount a brutal witch-hunt against them in his defence, and nothing good would come to anyone who claimed family ties to him. Just imagine, if the media could rip to shreds all the evidence tying Nelson Mezerhane, Patricia Poleo and Bishop Rosalio Castillo Lara to the murder of Danilo Anderson, all this about the mistresses and children of Baltazar would be child’s play for them [to discredit].

Q. Do you believe that the Conference of Venezuelan Bishops would defend him in such a grave case?

A. For them, this would be a joke. Remember that today, in the Mexican daily, La Jornada, there appeared declarations from Leopoldo González González the Secretary-General of the Conference of Mexican Bishops, defending the parish priest of Jalapa, Rafael Muñiz López, who is accused of being part of a distribution network for kiddie porn on the Internet. So, what did Mr. Leopoldo González González say to the journalists? Nothing less than this: He assured that such cases “make priests seem more human” to their parishes, causing us to “appreciate” them more, and he very firmly reiterated, “On the contrary, the more human they seem, the more we appreciate them.” So, for Conference of Venezuelan Bishops, the case of Porras and his illegitimate children will make him “much more human”. Holy shit!

Translation mine. Linkage added.

Holy shit, indeed.

BTW, Porras has something even more infamous to his name than a slew of illegitimate children. He’s also one of the many ranking churchmen who appeared at Miraflores Palace on April 12, 2002, to bless the fascist coup against Chavecito with his presence. You can see him in “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, talking animatedly and smiling with the coup-plotters, at one point even slapping their backs and hugging them. This while fully cognizant that dozens of innocent people had been killed the previous day and night, and hundreds more injured, all in the name of creating an incident that would “render illegitimate” the Chávez government (which was freely elected and, unlike any of its predecessors, fully democratic and not a bit repressive.)

This same bishop, who like so many others comes out fervently against abortion and birth control (to say nothing of same-sex marriage), is not a bit pro-life when it comes to the human rights of Chavistas or anyone else who doesn’t parrot the old Fourth Republic party lines. What makes anyone think he’d acknowledge his bastards? He’s a much bigger bastard himself, of course, but thanks to his lack of elected political power, he’s not fair game.

Unlike Lugo, who established his reputation as a progressive bishop and advocate of the poor and downtrodden, Baltazar Porras is a reactionary conservative fascist, who cares about nothing and no one except maybe, the filthy stinking rich…and Baltazar Porras, of course.

Jesus didn’t call guys like Porras “whited sepulchres” for nothing, either.