In a recent EN book review I expressed regret that the author had been taken in by the false claims of Alberto Rivera. An overseas reader asked for more details of what was perhaps the most successful religious literary hoax of the past century.
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.
