Turbulent Priest / Real Life

• Thomas Becket, as described above.
• The potential, and actual involvement, of major religious organizations in political matters is one of the main reasons that many secular radical political movements try to curb religious institutions, religious people and/or religion itself from taking power.
  • During The French Revolution, the Catholic Church was the largest landowner in France and in order to reform the economy, the newly formed National Assembly voted to sell Church property (a move supported by soon-to-be-former Bishop Talleyrand) and most controversially promulgated a Civic Constitution of the Clergy that made the French Catholic Church subservient to the national government, and priests and bishops into government servants. This was seen by French Catholics as invasive and threatening to their religion, was denounced by the Pope, and directly led to a Civil War in the Vendee.
    • Ironically the same Catholics greatly resented some of the Constitutional Clergy who fell out of favor with the rise of Napoléon Bonaparte (who managed to win a Concordat with the Church to heal religious disputes). From their perspectives, the likes of Abbe Gregoire, a civic clergyman, who advocated abolitionism, clampdown on antisemitism, and also advocated for the preservation of Church monuments and relics during the Revolution, fell into disfavor. Gregoire, a devout Catholic and firm revolutionary, strongly opposed Napoleon's plan to roll back the Church reform with the Concordat and to the end of his life, even during the Restoration, refused to abjure his oath to the discredited Civic Constitution.
  • During Red October, the Russian Orthodox Church was widely despised for its support of the deeply unpopular Tsar, its nasty antisemitism and opposition to any reforms and revolutions. So naturally, the Bolsheviks felt compelled to suppress the Orthodox Church by promoting state atheism, by supporting minority religions (such as Russian Muslims, Jews and Old Believers), and by actively executing clergymen and closing down churches. This policy ended with Stalin, a centrist who made an effort to restore some of the privileges of the battered Orthodox Church, albeit within limits. He especially tapped into this sentiment during World War II despite being an atheist on a personal level. He also reversed Lenin's policies towards religious minorities.
• During the Cristero War, President Calles restricted religious freedom in Mexico so as to turn it into a secular state. Because 90% of the country's population was Catholic, this was an unpopular move to say the least. The Catholics revolted, and kept fighting until America negotiated a peace. President Calles immediately broke his end of the deal, but soon he was exiled and there was a Catholic president in Mexico again. Today, most of Calles' anti-clerical laws are unenforced.
• Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla started the Mexican War of Independence by issuing the Cry of Dolores for the people of New Spain to revolt against their Spaniard overlords to restore King Ferdinand VII as King of Spain, managing to raise an army of 90,000 peasants in the process. He was defeated and executed, but his rebellion inspired more to rise up in his stead, eventually leading to Mexico's independence from Spain.
• Pope John Paul II actively encouraged the Solidarity movement in Poland, which resisted Communism. Some people credit the man with being a major part in Communism's non-violent downfall.
  • And he was far from being the only one. In The '80s, Father Jerzy Popieluszko was an activist preacher involved in the Solidarity movement, and murdered by the secret police.
    • A fairly large number of Catholic religious officials in Catholic parts of the Soviet bloc (as well as the Russian Empire) were actively involved in activities against the regime. One, Cardinal Josif Slipyj of Ukraine, provided the model for the fictitious Cardinal Lakota in the novel Shoes of the Fishermen. On the other hand, unfortunately many informed the secret police.
• Jaime Cardinal Sin, the Archbishop of Manila, was one of the main figures in the revolution that brought Philippine dictator Marcos down.
• During the Brazilian Military Regime, the government was a right-wing Catholic junta who (initially) enjoyed the Church's support, yet several individual priests, nuns and bishops were persecuted alongside Marxists and leftists for speaking out against it. One of them, Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, helped save the torture records in the Brazilian dictatorship and store them abroad for later use (as evidence against the torturers, hopefully, but, at the very least, as a registry of that dark period), besides providing aid and abode for those that resisted said dictatorship. He actually managed to copy all or most of the records in a measly 24 hours as well by using the structure of the Church (and against the wishes of its conservative side, which meant he had to do it subtly).
• Another example from Brazil: some bishops of the "Sul-1" branch of the Church tried to interfere in the Brazilian presidential elections in 2010, using abortion (changes to abortion laws weren't really being discussed) as an excuse to attack a candidate, ignoring the rules the Church itself set regarding interference in politics in the process. It got bad enough that the Pope became known to some people as the losing candidate's most effective campaign volunteer.
• Marco Arana in Peru interacted on behalf of natives against mining companies and other such forces. He even founded a political party! However, this involvement in politics got him expelled from the church. Other priests have also gotten involved but not to the same extent.
• Some clerics, Catholic and Protestant, were this to the Nazis. Many preached against the party's actions from the pulpit, while others hid those bound for the camps in their orphanages and abbeys. Several of these badass preachers were caught by the Nazi's and imprisoned and/or killed.
  • Catholic cardinals Von Preysing and Von Galen and Protestant minister Bonhoeffer were determined enemies of the Nazi regime and, as such, were loathed by Hitler who said "the foulest of carrion are those who come clothed in the cloak of humility and the foulest of these Count Presying! What a beast!". Coming from Hitler, it is a huge compliment to the moral fortitude of these men.
  • Fortunately Von Preysling was protected from Nazi retaliation by his high position. Unfortunately, his cathedral administrator, confidant, and fellow Turbulent Priest Bernard Lichtenberg, was not. Lichtenberg served at St. Hedwig's Cathedral from 1932, and was under the watch of the Gestapo by 1933 for his courageous support of prisoners and Jews. He became a confidante of Bishop von Preysing from 1935. He ran Von Preysing's aid unit, the Hilfswerke beim Bischöflichen Ordinariat Berlin, which secretly gave assistance to those who were being persecuted by the regime. From 1938, Lichtenberg conducted prayers for the Jews and other inmates of the concentration camps, including "my fellow priests there". For preaching against Nazi propaganda and writing a letter of protest concerning Nazi euthanasia, he was arrested in 1941, sentenced to two years of penal servitude, and died en route to Dachau Concentration Camp in 1943.
  • While some have believed that Hitler was Christian, his personal views were complex. He was raised Catholic, but by the time he was an adult he had a highly syncretized set of personal beliefs. He concluded a Concordat with the Vatican (overseen by Monsignor Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII) and several Protestant and Catholic priests advocated voting for Nazis over the Social Democrats, but this did not mean he supported Christianity or saw Nazi Culture as Christian. He considered Christian concerns with compassion and charity a significant weakness. Hitler also believed the core values of Nazism – like nationalism, obedience and loyalty to the state – were contradicted by religious teachings. Still the Church was sufficiently powerful that Hitler never made any great campaign to curb or persecute Christians until 1936 onwards, one such instance being that 15,000 Jehovah's Witness were detained in concentration camps where a quarter of them died. In the later stages of his regime, Hitler also sought to replace Christianity with the National Reich Church which, among other things, sought to prohibit the printing of Bibles and replace the Christian cross with the swastika. The "German Christian" movement was formed to fuse Nazi ideology with Christianity, aiming to overhaul and then replace the latter.
• Girolamo Savonarola, the 15th-century Florentine preacher, political reformer, and self-proclaimed prophet. He was charismatic enough to have won converts like Sandro Botticelli who willingly burned his own paintings during the Bonfire of the Vanities. It ended however in overall failure because, as Niccolò Machiavelli said, Savonarola was a charismatic but unarmed prophet and he had no army to enforce his theocracy before his defeat. He was burned as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition after denouncing Pope Alexander VI.
• Son Jong-nam was a North Korean defector and Christian missionary, who died in a Pyongyang prison after being arrested in 2006. In January 1998, Son defected from the tyrannical regime, took his wife and daughter and fled North Korea, joining his brother in Yanji, Yanbian Korean Autonomous Region in northeast China's Jilin province. A South Korean missionary, who lived in the region on the pretext of involvement in the lumber business, sheltered them for some time after their arrival. However, Son's wife died of leukemia seven months later. Son, distraught, began to grow closer to the missionary, leading to his eventual conversion to Christianity; he then aided the missionaries in converting other North Korean defectors in China. He was arrested by Chinese police and deported back to North Korea in January 2001, where his brother says he suffered electrical shocks and beatings with clubs, causing a limp in his leg and the loss of 32 kilograms (71 lb) of body weight. Son returned to North Korea with Bibles and cassette tapes in an effort to preach to the people in his home country. However, in January 2006, police found the Bibles at his home in Hoeryong and arrested him again. According to his brother, the charges were illegal border crossing, meeting with enemies of the state, and disseminating anti-state literature.
• Oscar Romero, a Catholic archbishop in El Salvador during the Salvadoran Civil War. He spoke out against the persecution of priests and human rights abuses carried out by the Salvadoran government and was consequently assassinated during Mass by a member of a state-sponsored death squad. He was canonized on October 14, 2018. While communists led the socialist guerrillas, the past military regimes and the fascistic death squads were so deplorable that much of the Church actively supported the guerrillas, partially motivated by a socialistic interpretation of Christianity known as liberation theology (Oscar Romero himself was sympathetic to the Catholic vision of liberation theology, but he distanced himself from "material liberation"; he gave liberation theology the lowest priority of the topics he studied and thus never read any liberation theology books he was given).
• Cardinal Vicente Enrique y Tarancón was despised by the most immovilist elements of the Franco dictatorship to the point of being greeted with the cry ¡Tarancón al Paredón! ("Gun down Tarancón!") at Carrero Blanco's funeral. It should be noted that after Vatican II the Franco dictatorship was a bigger Catholic hardliner than the Vatican itself.
• In medieval China, a wandering monk named Zhu Yuanzhang put an end to 100 years of Mongol rule in China and seized the throne as the Hongwu Emperor, first of the Ming Dynasty ^note Hongwu was Zhu's era name; his decree that every emperor from him onwards should only have one era name lasted until the fall of the Qing Dynasty more than 500 years later. A rare exception was Ming Yingzong, who had two separate reigns and thus two era names.. Since he had been born in a dirt-poor farming family, his is also one of the most epic Rags to Royalty stories ever.
• Fr. Alexis Toth, a saint in the American Orthodox Church, to the American Catholic Church. Originally an Eastern Catholic priest ministering to Ukrainian immigrants in Minnesota, he was enraged by how his flock was treated as second-class Catholics for following the Greek Rite rather than the Roman. He not only quit Catholicism to join the Orthodox Church, but he also led many thousands of Eastern European immigrants to follow him as well.
• St Josaphat Kuntsevych was a 17th-century Lithuanian Basilian monk and archeparch of the Ruthenian Uniate Church (what is now called the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church) who ministered when Lithuania was divided between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches; he sought Catholic unity and tried to bring the two Churches together, but the Eastern Christians feared that unity with Rome meant suppressing their Byzantine traditions and replacing them with Latin liturgical rites; the Polish clergy, on the other hand, demanded exactly just that. Being an Eastern Catholic Christian, St Josaphat swore fidelity to Rome, but he maintained preserving the Byzantine traditions of his Church, facing opposition from both sides. On 12 November, he confronted a violently angry Orthodox mob, who then killed him, dragged his mangled body around, and threw it into the river.
• The Trope Makers were probably the Biblical prophets, who prophesied against the corruption of the people, the priests, and above all, the kings of Israel and Judah. For example, Moses' opposition to the Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus.
• Many leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. starting in the 1950s were religious leaders, with the most famous examples being Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Many leaders in the continuing effort to correct racial injustices in American society today are also religious leaders.
• Priests following the Liberation Theology loudly protested against Central and South American dictators and some paid for this with their lives.
• The Vicariate of Solidarity aka Vicaría de la Solidaridad was an agency of the Chilean Catholic Church under the Archdiocese of Santiago, during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Founded at the request of Pope Paul VI and led by Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez, it had many other members of the clergy among its members.
• Saint Alberto Hurtado, the second Chilean Saint, was considered as one of these in his initial years and was even given the unflattering nickname of "Cura Rojo" (Red Priest), alluding to his supposed "Communist" views.
• John Ball, a leader in the English Peasant's Revolt of 1381, was a Lollard priest. He preached a radical social egalitarianism, supporting it with his interpretation of the Bible. Like the other Revolt leaders, he was hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason.
• Jan Želivský was a Czech priest who triggered the Bohemian Crusades by literally throwing the city council of Prague out of the window after his teacher Jan Hus was burned at the stake because of his radical ideas for church reformation, which the King of Bohemia and the Pope didn't take too kindly. Želivský served as one of the rebel leaders, and while he was executed by beheading later on, the rebels eventually won out after more than 25 years of fighting and the Bohemian Church gained its independence from the Papacy.
• Antônio Conselheiro was a Brazilian preacher that supported the monarchy and opposed the newly formed Republic established by rich farmers who deposed Dom Pedro II. He rallied support from the disenfranchised, former slaves and many others into creating an autonomous community in the Northeast, which culminated in a conflict known as the Canudos War, the bloodiest Civil War in Brazilian history.
• Bogdan Zimonjić, a Serbian Orthodox priest that advocated freedom for his nation from the Ottoman Empire and led two uprisings to achieve that. Also doubles as a Badass Preacher, since he personally served as voivode or military commander.
• Ibn Tumart declared a jihad to topple the Almoravid Empire whom he regarded as corrupt and "insufficiently pious". Keep in mind the Almoravids were way more conservative than the previous Muslim rulers in Iberia. Tumart was considered such radical by his contemporaries that he was expelled from every city he visited (including Mecca during his pilgrimage) because he preached Muslims had strayed from their religion and "purification" was needed. Nevertheless, he gained a big enough and devoted following to successfully overthrow the Almoravids. Unlike other examples of this trope, he actually went a step further by proclaiming himself the Mahdi - the Islamic Messiah - to legitimize his campaign.