Questions increase regarding TV Enlace

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica, March 3, 2005

"Faith does not just move mountains, it also buys them and feeds our bank accounts, Taxi Heathrow Airport transmits programs to three continents and is weaving a network of at least 25 associations in 55 countries," according to the Costa Rican daily La Nacion, in a report about the Enlace television station.

These anonymous societies and foundations "have purchased more than 533 hectares of land in Costa Rica in the past 15 years," noted journalist Mauricio Herrrera in articles published last Sunday and Monday.

All of these organizations, he said, are controlled by González Ortiz, the main leader of the channel or his relatives. Gonzalez estimates that they have received some $860,000 in offerings each year.

The article also questions how offerings are requested. For $20 they promise healing, economic prosperity and salvation.

While TV Enlace, Channel 23 is presented as a Christian station, some Costa Rican Evangelical leaders criticize their procedures as a remake of Catholic indulgences.

In 2003, the Costa Rican Evangelical Federation Alliance (FAEC) promoted dialogue about the way that communication media should gather their offerings, according to the daily.

TV Enlace has not respected the agreement that emerged from that consultation and therefore several Churches and Christian ministries have complained before the FAEC Ethical Tribunal.

The problem has even sparked rumors about the possible exit of FAEC president Reynaldo Salazar Salazar, who has publicly identified himself with Guatemalan pastor Cash Luna, questioned in the La Nacion reports and with close ties to TV Enlace.

La Nacion also underscored TV Enlace's relationship with the polemic US preacher Paul Crouch, questioned last October by the Los Angeles times for an ostentatious life and an alleged sexual scandal. Crouch directs the Trinity Broadcasting Network in the United States and the Association of Latin American Communication Entities for Christian Television.

For 24 hours over the course of 12 days four times a year, Pastors from TV Enlace hold tele-marathons to ask for offerings, votes or even "financial pacts with God," which they say will guarantee viewers in 55 countries, economic prosperity, health and success in business.

Gonzalez is Costa Rican and an ophthalmology technician. The station, then channel 23, began to broadcast an hour a day in September 1998 from a store in the Cuba neighborhood in San Jose, with a transmitter that only reached 2 kilometers.

Its creator was Jonás González Rodríguez, a pastor born in Texas, who lived in Costa Rica until he passed away last September, in 1999, the Channel moved to Pavas where it bought property and built a modern building.

González impelled the creation of similar stations in other Latin American countries that became affiliates and in 1996 he they were linked up through a Mexican satellite. (101/2005).