President Javier Milei called to carry out a “culture war” to promote “the ideas of freedom and defeat the ideas of socialism” on Saturday in a speech during the inauguration of an Evangelical mega-church in Chaco, which its owners claim is the largest in Argentina.

Milei visited Chaco province for the first time as president for the closure of a two-day Evangelical congress and the inauguration of the renewed Portal del Cielo (Heaven’s Gate) temple, which was renovated to host up to 10,000 people. He was invited by pastor Jorge Ledesma, leader of the Iglesia Cristiana Internacional.

The church was founded by Ledesma and his wife Alicia Ledesma in 1994. They also created a “supernatural Evangelism” prayer movement called Invasión del Amor de Dios (Invasion of God’s Power), that spread throughout 57 countries, claiming to carry out miracles and heal people. This included but was not limited to ending people’s drug addictions or allowing wheelchair users to walk again.

Evangelical churches have widely extended their presence in Argentina over the past decade, with the emergence of larger places of worship like Ledesma’s.

Milei was also welcomed by Chaco Governor Leandro Zdero, who personally invited him along with Ledesma. The president’s party, La Libertad Avanza (LLA) does not have any governor in power in the province, and Zdero — who belongs to center Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) — became the first provincial leader to formalize an alliance with LLA earlier this year.

Zdero participated in the activities as well. On Thursday, during the official inauguration of the temple, he said that it “became the house of God, as big as the heart of this family.” Honduran-American pastor Guillermo Maldonado, co-founder of El Rey Jesús mega-church in Miami, was also invited.

The president has a mixed relationship with religion, but this is the first time he has shown closeness with the Evangelical Church. “I am a Catholic, but I also practice Judaism a little,” he told Italian TV channel Rete 4 in early 2024 after visiting Pope Francis in Rome. Since the start of his administration, Milei has had close ties with Judaism, and visited Israel several times, engaging in Jewish rituals.

In the past, he has said he was considering converting to Judaism and he wanted to become “the first Jewish president in Argentina,” but ultimately turned down the idea given the shabbat would be incompatible with his duties. In Argentina, presidents have traditionally been Catholic.

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Milei’s speech at the Evangelical temple

During his speech, Milei said that the left has “won” the cultural war and, in its “anti-capitalist nature,” has “distorted the Judaeo-Christian values and principles that made the West great.”

The president said that “social justice is nothing more than envy with rhetoric” and that it is “a capital sin.” He added that social justice is “not only a violation of property rights” but also the economic principle of “scarcity.”

“Freedom is nothing more and nothing less than the light that allows us to sweep away the darkness of those who want to enslave us,” Milei said. “They will not bring us down. We know the Sacred Scriptures.”

Jorge Ledesma’s controversies

In an interview with Radio Rivadavia on Friday, Ledesma described the Friday and Saturday activities as a “Christian leadership congress” and said that attendees had to pay a fee of “AR$25,000” (US$19). He said that while generally they don’t charge for entry to their congresses, they were doing so in this case to “cover logistics and organization costs.” Tickets in the official site ran for AR$30,000, and there was also a VIP ticket at AR$100,000 (US$126).

Ledesma and his church is not short of controversies. In 2021, the Chaco superior justice court confirmed a sentence against Ledesma’s God Assemblies Union, enforcing it to pay a AR$3 million compensation (US$2,380) to the family of a man who was sexually assaulted as a boy by a “spiritual guide” of Ledesma’s church in 2009.

The so-called spiritual guide had been convicted to 10 years in prison in 2011 for several rape accounts. In 2013, the family decided to also demand monetary compensation for moral damages, a process that ended in 2021.