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Catholic World News News Feature

Argentine Pastor Says Avoid "Bad Example" Of US Televangelists February 18, 1999

BUENOS AIRES (CWNews.com) - Argentine Evangelical leader Marcelo Laffite has asked fellow pastors "not to follow the dark stories of corruption" that rocked televangelism in the United States over the past two decades, in an editorial in the Evangelical magazine "El Puente" (The Bridge).

Laffite referred to the book "Integrity," by US Evangelical leader Richard Dortch, recently translated into Spanish. Dortch was president of PTL -- "Praise the Lord" -- the successful televangelism group run by Jim and Tammy Bakker. Laffite said, "Dortch tells bluntly and without hypocrisy how he and Jim Bakker ended up in prison accused of sexual immorality, tax evasion, and racketeering." The Argentine minister said that the wave of corruption not only affected other televangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart, "but showed a dark, dirty fight for the control of PTL among several other televangelists."

"How sad it is to realize that Evangelical pastors sold their own souls just to make their wallets thicker, when they were supposed to bring God to the people," Laffite wrote. "I hope that we Argentine Christians, so prone to import fashions from the United States, may keep from bringing this evil," he concluded. Laffite's editorial comes to light as tensions and mutual accusations of corruption have been dividing the small Evangelical community.