During WWII false paperwork was rampant in Spain. In Franco's Spain, for example, even diplomats sold thousands and thousands of passports on the black market but also several prominent diplomats provided large numbers to Jews for free to help them escape.
Even today corruption in Spain is
rampant:
Why Corruption Reigns in Spain
As Leslie Price of Evangelicals Now points out:
"Alberto Rivera (1935-1997) was born and brought up in the Canary Islands where harassment of Protestants was much less than in mainland Spain.
His mother died when he was nine. As a teenager he left the Roman church and was baptised in the local evangelical church at 17. After working as a fare collector on the buses, in 1955 he independently obtained a place at a Protestant seminary in Costa Rica, but was expelled in 1957. For a time he worked for the Methodist Church in Costa Rica, and in 1964-5 for the Christian Re-formed Church in New Jersey, USA, who dismissed him.
In 1967 he returned to Spain where he was employed in a Christian school and again dismissed. He then secured work with children in a Catholic parish. It was in this era that he had his photograph taken in priest's clothes on an identity card, and also obtained a certificate from the Archbishop of Madrid 'confirming' his status as a Catholic priest, which he was not.
In a brief visit to London in 1967, he encountered the Church of God in Prophecy and went to work with them in Tennessee, but was dismissed in 1968. He reappeared dressed as a priest in Puerto Rico in 1968, but returned to Florida in 1969 as a Protestant. In 1969 he functioned briefly as a priest in the Liberal Catholic Church, but left Florida suddenly and went to Seattle in Washington State. Eventually he ended up in California.
It was here that he established himself as an anti-Roman evangelist, and was also ordained as a Baptist minister. He claimed to have been a Jesuit agent, undermining Protestant churches, and to have knowledge of various atrocities, including murder, by Catholics. This message was carried around the world in millions of tracts."
This prompted investigations and he was exposed as a fraud in Christianity Today and in the Journal of Pastoral Practice in 1981. In 1983, the Christian Research Institute (CRI) exposed him as a fraud after a careful investigation. Australian and South African Protestant groups conducted separate investigations and came to exactly the same conclusion: fraud. There were many other investigations carried out as well with the same results.
Only a few Canadian Protestants and those fundamentalist Americans he had deceived continued to believe him. If you have an interest in Alberto, I recommend 'Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness: The Truth about the Vatican and the Birth of Islam' by Gary Dale Cearley as one of several well researched books on the subject.
