- by Graham Holton
- The Guardian
- Issue #2143
Pope Francis. Photo: Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk – flickr.com (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Pope Francis has died. He is mourned and remembered as a great man who loved the ill and destitute, washing and kissing the feet of women and Muslims.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires and cardinal of the Catholic Church in Argentina, was elected as pope in 2013, the first from Latin America, changing his name to Francis. Critics have pointed out that while he accepted condoms to prevent the spread of STDs, he opposed marriage equality, euthanasia, and the legalisation of abortion, for any reason including rape. Bergoglio protected priests accused of the sexual abuse of children, regarding these abuses as spiritual failures rather than criminal acts.
Bergoglio had a dark past. During the brutal military dictatorship in Argentina, 1976 to 1983, 30,000 people were “disappeared. Amongst the victims were two bishops and many priests. Soon after he became pope, allegations emerged that he withdrew protection from two Jesuits resulting in their captivity and torture. The Vatican denied the claims. The generals responsible for these atrocities, such as General Jorge Rafael Videla, were never excommunicated by the Church.
Bergolio allegedly handed over a group of Jesuit priests and catechists to the military. He maintained he warned the priests to leave the poor neighbourhood where they worked, and he contacted the military to release them. Those kidnapped remember it differently. Orlando Yorio said that “Bergoglio didn’t warn us of the danger we were in” and “I also don’t have any reason to think he did anything for our freedom, quite the opposite.” Father Francisco Jalics issued a statement that he had “reconciled with these events,” suggesting he had been betrayed and now forgave the Pope.
The noted Latin Americanist, Hugh O’Shaughnessy, wrote in the UK Guardian: “The Catholic church was complicit in dreadful crimes in Argentina.” The Argentinian church had “communed and supported the unspeakably brutal western-supported military dictatorship that seized power in that country in 1976.” The generals dropped bodies from planes over the River Plate so they could not be found. Hundreds of children born to tortured mothers were illegally handed to adoptive families, mainly military personnel. The victims’ families claim Bergoglio was aware of what the military was doing and did nothing.
Emilio Mignone, an Argentine lawyer and human rights activist, wrote in Church and Dictatorship: The Complicity of Church and Dictatorship in Argentina (1988) of the “sinister complicity” between the Church and the military, who “did the dirty work of cleaning up the inside of the Church, with the acquiesce of the priests.” Mignone described the Catholic Church as a “web of mediocrity, cowardice, and complicity.”
The actions of Bergoglio were in marked contrast to Oscar Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop who was killed in 1980 by a death squad during mass, for criticising the government. Ivan Petrella, religious affairs commentator at think tank Fundacion Pensar, writes: “Bergoglio was not a Romero. Very few people were like that.”
