On July 5, 2025, Javier Milei, President of the Argentine Republic, marked the country’s political and religious history by participating in the inauguration of the “Portal del Cielo”, a monumental evangelical auditorium with a capacity of more than 10,000 places, erected in Resistuncia, in the province of Chaco. This event, the first of its kind for an Argentine head of state, took place within the framework of the international Christian Congress “Invasión del Amor de Dios”.
The temple “Portal del Cielo”, the fruit of a project initiated more than ten years ago and entirely funded by the members of the international Christian Church founded by Pastors Jorge and Alicia Ledesma, is now recognized as the largest evangelical place of worship in the country. This place has gathered on this occasion several international leaders, including the Hondurian-American pastor Guillermo Maldonado, a world figure in Pentecostalism, author of more than fifty translated works and pastor of a mega-church in Miami, United States.
President Milei’s participation in this ceremony had an unprecedented impact. In his speech, he defended the Judeo-Christian values, affirming their centrality for individual freedom, opposing the “state religion” and headable head-on the notion of social justice, described as “anti-value on the left”. His remarks aroused important debates in evangelical circles and on the Argentine public scene, some greeting a new era of state-religion dialogue, others criticizing a political and spiritual amalgam.
The event brought together nearly 15,000 people, benefited from a substantial and crystallized security system at the growing weight of evangelical churches in contemporary Argentine society. It reveals the ability of these movements to federate, influence and dialogue directly with political power, while offering a privileged field of study on religious and social dynamics in Latin America today.
