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 Alexander Tschugguel / Twitter

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AUSTRIA, March 23, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) ― Alexander Tschugguel, the young man who removed pachamama idols from a Catholic church and threw them in the river during the Amazon Synod, is on the mend and returning home from the hospital, where he was being treated for the coronavirus.

“On my way home from #hospital. Will need a few days still but happy about being out of [the] hospital! Deo Gratias! #catholic,” he tweeted this morning underneath a photograph of himself, masked but clearly happy, in the back of a medical van. 

Tschugguel, 26, who became internationally known for removing and disposing of wooden pachamama figurines from a Roman church during the Amazon Synod last October, had been hospitalized with the COVID-19 coronavirus since March 17. 

Tschugguel, the founder of the St. Boniface Institute, is the highest-profile lay Catholic leader with the virus, with thousands of supporters praying for his complete recovery. Tschugguel has used his ordeal to send a Christian message, saying that God “demands sacrifices from us” and that we have to “repent for all the bad things in the world and especially for all the bad things that have happened in the Church.”

Referring to the civil and ecclesiastical restrictions on the public during the pandemic, Tshugguel has counselled meekness to God’s will.

“God in His abundant providence has imposed these restrictions upon us and we must see them as a cross to bear, especially for all those who are fatally ill with the virus, for all those families that are torn apart, for all aborted children, for the destruction of our homelands,” he wrote to LifeSiteNews.  

“For all this suffering we must now sacrifice our freedom, our prosperity and the lives we’re accustomed to living,” he continued. 

“Let us do this together as believers. We can rest assured that God will never abandon us.”

Tschugguel promised to make a video about his ordeal once he is well enough to do so. He has also stressed that COVID-19 “strikes much harder than expected and hits all age groups.”