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<div class="entry-date">March 20, 2013<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/20/can-even-god-forgive-jorge-mario-bergoglio/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/20/can-even-god-forgive-jorge-mario-bergoglio/</a><br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="subheadlinestyle">The Pope and the General: a CounterPunch
Special Investigation</div>
<h1 class="article-title">Can God Forgive Jorge Mario Bergoglio?</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES</div>
<div class="main-text">
<p><em>Dedicated to Jack Kernaghan, SJ.</em></p>
<p>There are sins and there are mortal sins. There are crimes and there
are heinous crimes. Finally, there are abominations, sins so violent
and godless that they cried out to heaven for vengeance–or so I was
taught in catechism class in Brooklyn in the 1950s.</p>
<p>Today some of those abominations would fall under the secular
judicial category of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But, we
were told, all human transgressions, even the most heinous and
abominable, can be forgiven by God. This is the solid bedrock of Roman
Catholic doctrine on the question of sin, confession and forgiveness.
It would be vainglorious and prideful to assume that any human act, no
matter how egregious, could trump or surpass the absolute and
limitless Divine Mercy of God. But there are conditions to be met.
First, the penitent must make a full, detailed, and complete
confession. No dirty, little secrets can be held back in the
confessional.</p>
<p>(“Bless me father for I have sinned”). This includes an admission
of personal guilt and responsibility (“<i>Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa</i>”
— it was my fault, my most grievous fault). The confession must be
followed by a sincere act of contrition. (“I am sorry for these sins
because they offend Thee, my God, and Your infinite goodness”). Lastly,
absolution and forgiveness requires the expression of firm resolve to
sin no more and to resist the temptations to do evil.</p>
<p>Thus, even the most heinous crimes against humanity committed by the
generals and their henchmen during the Argentine dirty war (1973-1982)
could technically be forgiven and erased. The <em>Proceso de
Reorganización</em> (the military dictatorship’s name for the war)
turned ordinary people into enemies of the state and waged a war
through the process of <i>limpieza</i>, a political cleansing of
dangerous and dirty elements, subversives, beginning with leftist
guerrillas, those suspected of supporting the left, union leaders,
university students, artists, writers, journalists, psychoanalysts,
nuns and priests who lived and worked with the poor, and then going
after the politically neutral, the unaligned, until finally the crazy
generals went after the merely ‘indifferent’.</p>
<p>The tactics were ruthless: kidnapping in broad daylight,
disappearances, interrogations, sadistically creative forms of
torture, (abusing children in front of their parents, torturing wives
in front of husbands) and murder, hundreds of the alleged 30,000 by
means of drugging and dropping living bodies into the sea from planes
and helicopters.</p>
<p>The Dirty War created a culture of terror and a space of death that
silenced the surviving and trembling majority and that made a mockery
of the legal, judicial, commercial, and religious institutions,
inviting them to be active co-conspirators in what could be called an
ultra-orthodox Catholic jihad.</p>
<p>Among the tens of thousands of victims were 150 Catholic priests who
did not bend, as well as hundreds of nuns, lay catechists, and
religious persons who embraced the post-Vatican II 1968 Medellin
(Colombia) Conference of Latin American Bishops who agreed that the
Catholic Church should realign itself by declaring a “preferential
option for the poor”, and calling for the creation of fairly autonomous
“base communities” in which the poor would learn to read and to
interpret the Bible in a new way, as a path toward building more
humane, more equitable, more inclusive societies that conformed to the
humble example of Jesus and his disciples, their love of the poor, in
particular.</p>
<p>The Latin American bishops wanted the poor to know that Jesus did
not want them to suffer and to die from hunger, poverty, and neglect,
that life itself was a Christian value, and death, while inevitable,
was not the sum of a persons’ existential <i>raison d’etre. </i> Beyond
that the Latin American bishops recognized social justice as a primary
moral value of the universal Catholic Church. Suddenly “love thy
neighbor as thyself” meant something very different. A small revolution
occurred in Latin America, as nuns left the cloisters and joined the
working-class poor, as religious habits, elaborate vestments were
exchanged for blue jeans and simple cotton dresses held together with
safety pins and sturdy black shoes exchanged for rustic sandals.</p>
<p>Liberation theology and the spread of activist ‘base communities’
was targeted by the Argentine military dictators, led by General Jorge
Videla. A devout Catholic, Videla was influenced by the
ultra-conservative philosophy of Opus Dei, an international
right-leaning (proto-fascist) Catholic organization, better described
as a social movement.</p>
<p>Opus Dei, founded in Spain in the 1920s, was modeled after the
Society of Jesus, who were known as ‘God’s Marines’. Opus Dei called
for a ‘church militant,’ one that was aristocratic, paternalistic, and
baroque, its ideology stressing purity, familism, loyalty to home and
nation, and obedience to the Pope. The Society of Jesus may be ‘God’s
soldiers’, but Jesuit ‘militancy’ bears no resemblance to the cult of
Opus Dei.</p>
<p>The foot soldiers of Opus Dies in Argentina were drawn from a larger
and more ideologically diffuse internationalist movement known as
Catholic Action, an international call to young Catholics worldwide to
stand tall and proud in defending key values of the Church and to make
a difference in the world. Catholic Action meant different things to
different people in different countries at different times, lending
itself to socialist or to fascist political parties.</p>
<p>What it meant to me as a high school student at the Our Lady of
Wisdom Academy in South Ozone Park Queens in 1960 when I marched as a
standard bearer in a counter-May Day parade proclaiming Catholic
Action, remains a mystery. But to this day I can sing the militant
anthem we sang:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><i>An Army of Youth flying the standard of truth.</i></p>
<p><i>We are fighting for Christ the Lord.</i></p>
<p><i>Heads lifted high, Catholic Action our cry,</i></p>
<p><i>And the cross our only sword.</i></p>
<p> </p>
<p><i>On earth’s battlefield, never advantage we’ll yield,</i></p>
<p><i>As dauntlessly on we sing,</i></p>
<p><i>Comrades true, dare and do,</i></p>
<p><i>‘Neath the Queen’s [Virgin Mary] White and Blue.</i></p>
<p> </p>
<p><i>For our flag, for our faith, for Christ the King.</i></p>
<p><i>Christ lifts his hand, the King commands,</i></p>
<p><i>His challenge, “Come and follow me”</i></p>
<p><i>From every side, with eager stride,</i></p>
<p><i>We form in the lines of victory.</i></p>
<p> </p>
<p><i>Let foemen lurk, and laggards shirk</i></p>
<p><i>We throw our fortunes with the Lord.</i></p>
<p><i>Mary’s Son, til the world is won,</i></p>
<p><i>We have pledged You our loyal word.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Brazil, a young man who later became the beloved little ‘red’
Archbishop of Recife, Dom Helder Camara, in the 1960s began his
political life as a young, impassioned participant in the Catholic
Action movement in the slums of Brazil in the 1920s and 1930s. In
Argentina, Catholic Action was associated with a Peronist ‘Catholic
populism’ of the sort associated with Jorge Mario’s earlier years as a
prelate.</p>
<p>There are many paradoxes. A guerrilla movement, calling themselves
the <i>Montoneros </i>(named after the 19<sup>th</sup> century
gauchos who resisted pro-British liberals), had its origins in the
Catholic Action Peronist Youth movements. Monteneros in the 1970s
worked closely with “worker priests” (another movement) in social
work camps in rural areas. The original Monteneros aspired to many of
the same social gospel principles of liberation theology, at least
until the Monteneros radicalized and went underground. At the same
time small Marxist guerrilla bands formed, including the ERP, the
Peoples Revolutionary Army and the FAR, the Revolutionary Army,
inspired by Cuban, Chinese and Vietnamese revolutionary movements.</p>
<p>The military coup of 1973 and General Videla’s dirty war arose out
of this socio-political crucible, one in which radical ideologies–
Marxist, Socialist, Fascist, and Catholic–clashed and sometimes
converged. The meteoric rise to Ecclesiastical power of Jorge Mario
Bergogio, began simultaneously with the rise of Videla in 1973, with
Bergoglio’s appointment as Provincial, head of the Society of Jesus in
Argentina. He was young, just four years after ordination to the
priesthood. His appointment could be described as being the right man
at the right place in the right time, or – for those who suffered the
catastrophe of the dirty war – as the wrong man in the wrong time at
the wrong place.</p>
<p>As Horatio Verbitsky, the unauthorized biographer of Jorge Mario
Bergogio, has described him, Bergoglio is a blend of seemingly
irreconcilable dispositions. On the one hand, he is a man of the
people, known in Buenos Aires as the Cardinal who dressed simply and
traveled incognito by bus and subway. He showed compassion for the
‘common man’, the ordinary worker whose dignity had been challenged by
so many decades of political and economic instability.</p>
<p>No doubt the College of Cardinals was impressed with Bergoglios’
modesty, his austerity <em>and</em> his bedrock conservative
theological and social agendas. In Argentina, Cardinal Bergoglio was a
bulldog of the Vatican, even though he spent little time there. He was
close to Benedict XVI, and graciously bowed out and stepped down as
candidate for pope in 2005, deferring to Cardinal Ratsinger. There is
speculation that Benedict may have even let it be known, before his
resignation, that Bergoglio was his preferred successor. The alacrity
of the vote suggests as much. Moreover, like Benedict, the former
Jesuit Provincial, Archbishop, and Cardinal of Buenos Aires espoused a
rigid and fundamentalist interpretation of Catholic doctrine and social
morality.</p>
<p>As Jesuit Provincial in Argentina, Bergoglio shaped the Argentine
Society of Jesus in his own image and likeness, and in so doing he
isolated the Argentine Company of Jesus from the rest of Latin America,
if not the world. He was a controversial and divisive religious leader
who provoked a severe rift in the Society of Jesus between priests who
were ready to challenge the dictatorship’s gross violations of basic
human rights and those clerics, old and young, who followed their
Provincial leaders’s attempts to distance themselves from politics.</p>
<p>Bergoglio espoused an insular theology of pious sacramentalism, an
almost medieval mystical spirituality, detached from, and incapable of
responding to the political repression. While praising traditional
pastoral ministries to the poor, visiting and caring for the sick,
feeding the hungry, burying the dead, as a proper Christian mission,
Bergoglio condemned the formation of ecclesiastical base communities
in which the Scriptures were read in a Marxist key as a ‘pedagogy for
the oppressed’, as Paulo Freyre phrased it. Words like ‘liberation’,
‘structural violence’<i>, ‘conscientizaçao’ </i>(the Brazilian key
word signifying the awakening of a critical consciousness ) were not
acceptable and Bergoglio cautioned the Jesuits to reject the false
theology of liberation, and to avoid contact with those who used the
scriptures to politicize and empower the poor. This was dangerous. It
could be viewed by powerful sectors of Argentine society as
‘subversive’.</p>
<p>The militancy of the Jesuits is renowned and is anything other than
detached, insulated, or rigidly conservative. Jesuits are taught to be
open to the world, like their knight-errant founding Father Ignatius.
They often cut a dashing figure while preferring to work from behind
the scenes. Jesuits are taught to be worldly, argumentative, and to
welcome a good debate. (The French philosopher Simone Weil told her
brother that she had once kept a Jesuit up for hours in a most
burdensome conversation: ”God had put me here to do this to the
Jesuits, to drive them to distraction”).</p>
<p>The founder of the Jesuits, Saint Ignatius Loyola, a wounded soldier
turned university scholar, joined with several other brilliant
students at the University of Paris in 1534 to found the Society (or
the Company) of Jesus. Their mission was to bring Jesus’s teachings to
the furthest reaches of the world, to educate the poor but also the
wealthy, to found schools, universities, and hospitals. As God’s
soldiers, Jesuits are willing to sacrifice their lives, if necessary.
Jesuit training requires some twelve years of study and preparation.
The curriculum requires the cultivation of physical and moral
discipline, soldierly obedience to orders, courage, flexibility — a
readiness to accept a new assignment anywhere in the world) and
dedicated scholarship. Every Jesuit priest has a doctoral degree, in
addition to an advanced degree in theology. While pledging loyalty to
the Pope, the symbol of their universalism and global mission, Jesuits
pride themselves on their independence, their freedom to engage, when
necessary, in ‘loyal opposition’ to Church hierarchies when they veer
from the teachings of Jesus.</p>
<p>Bergoglio led the Jesuits in Argentina at one of the most
politically volatile epochs in contemporary Latin American history
amidst political conflicts that swept through Central and South
America in 1970s and 1980s, from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala to
Peru, Colombia and Brazil. The Jesuits arose as a strong presence in
defending the political and human rights of peasants, indigenous
peoples and the urban poor.</p>
<p>In Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador Jesuits positioned
themselves on the side of those who were persecuted by right wing
military dictatorships. They did so at their own risk.</p>
<p>In El Salvador, Oscar Romero, who was trained in Jesuit philosophy,
was a socially and politically conservative priest who experienced a
conversion of sorts after being appointed Archbishop of San Salvador
in the midst of an American supported counter-insurgency war. Romero
took off his glasses and looked around him. He witnessed Salvador’s own
dirty war being waged by the military against their political
opponents. He surprised the Catholic world when he put his body and his
voice between himself and his parishioners to defend the rights of
people to resist their oppressors. Romero was murdered by a death squad
assassin while celebrating Mass in his cathedral on March 24 1980.
This heinous crime was followed in 1989, by the execution of six
Jesuit scholars and priests who were murdered at San Salvador’s
Universidad Centroamericana by hit men commissioned by Salvadoran Army
officers. Pity the nation that requires heroes of ordinary men! But
heroes these Jesuits were.</p>
<p><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/dropzone/2013/03/bergoglio.jpeg"><img
class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-52546" alt="bergoglio"
src="cid:part1.09050804.03030703@freedomarchives.org" width="510"
height="279"></a></p>
<p><em>Jorge Mario Bergoglio (now Francis) giving spiritual comfort,
the Body of Christ [‘Amen’] to any elderly and frail Jorge Videla, the
political architect of the Dirty War, with whom Bergoglio had met
secretly in 1976. In Bergoglio’s version he met to intervene on behalf
of two disappeared Jesuits, a story contested by one the Jesuits who
accused Bergogio of handing him over to his torturers.</em></p>
<p><b>The Pope and the Dirty War </b></p>
<p>No sooner was he elected Pope, than Bergoglio’s activities and his
history during the dirty war dominated the media putting a damper on
what should have been wild celebrations among Catholics world-wide.
Benedict XVI was not much loved by the world’s Catholics, except
possibly the members of the Vatican Curia. Few tears were shed as he
was helicoptered off to a private castle-like temporary residence.</p>
<p>Pope Francis the First was a first in many respects – the first
Latino pope, the first pope from the global South, the first Jesuit
Pope, the first pope to name himself after the beloved Saint Francis,
who was never a Pope at all. Pope Francis has both <i>dignitas</i>
and the common touch. He refused the papal throne, he pays his hotel
bills, and he wears plain black shoes rather than pink slippers. He
asked to be blessed before raising his arm to bless the multitude. All
good signs of a pope who might signal a move away from the pomp and
circumstance of the out-of-touch royal aristocratic ‘popery’.</p>
<p>Then came the allegations concerning the former Jesuit Provincial’s
‘timid’ behavior toward the military dictatorship as Argentina veered
into a state of total warfare against an estimated 30,000 citizens
suspected of harboring subversive desires (if not acts) who were
disappeared (kidnapped), tortured, and murdered in a paranoid <i>limpieza</i>,
a social-political cleansing so fierce, so arbitrary, so ugly that
some of military officials ordered to carry out the executions became
ill and went to their priests for advice.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there were enough high ranking Catholic clerics who
joined forces with the Dirty War warriors, to calm the doubts of the
executioners, using Scriptural texts and Theological Reason.</p>
<p>Although the Vatican stepped in quickly to deny the allegations as
nothing more than “opportunistic defamations from anti-clerical
leftists” (<em>New York Times)</em>, the accusations against now Pope
Francis are not new and they are troubling. There are three standing
accusations against him, although only one has, thus far, been
seriously vetted by the media. The first concerns Bergoglio’s
privileged knowledge and his possible complicity in sanctioning the
removal (i.e, confiscation) of babies from disappeared and detained
political prisoners and their placement in ‘good’ Christian, military
households where they would be saved from the germ of the subversive
Marxist thinking of their parents.</p>
<p>In this regard, the <i>Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo</i> released on
March 13<sup>th</sup> 2013 the following fragment from Bergoglio’s
testimony to the Tribunal held in 2010 to investigate the <em>“Plan
Sistemático de apropiación y en la megacausa ESMA”</em> – the junta’s
systematic kidnapping of children by the officers of the quaintly
named <em>Esscuela Superior de Mecanica de la Armada,</em> the Navy
Petty Officers School of Mechanics, now known simply as the <em>Escuela
de Mecánica de la Armada, EMA,</em> Navy School of Mechanics. ESMA was
turned into the most politically and mentally deranged concentration
and detention camp of the Argentine dirty war.</p>
<p>Bergoglio was summoned by the Tribunal in order to testify in the
case of a pregnant woman, Elena de la Cuadra, who was abducted and
detained at ESMA. During the period of her detention, the parents of
the missing woman appealed to Father Bergoglio for help in vain. During
this period Bergoglio received Elena’s father on two occasions,
referring him to the Archbishop of La Plata, Mario Picchi. He [not
clear whether the he refers to Bergoglio or to Archbishop Picchi]
confirmed that Elena had given birth to a girl named Ana Libertad and
who was in the care of a family: “The baby is being raised well by a
family, Elena’s situation is irreversible,” he explained. Ana Libertad
remains disappeared.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p><i>Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo hace pública la declaración del Papa
electo Jorge Bergoglio, en el juicio por Plan Sistemático de
Apropiación de Menores. Allí se lo citó para declarar acerca del caso
de la detenida desaparecida embarazada Elena de la Cuadra, cuya familia
acudió a él, en vano, en busca de ayuda. En ese entonces Bergoglio
recibió al padre de Elena en dos oportunidades, derivándolo al
Arzobispo de La Plata, Mario Picchi. Èste le confirmó que Elena había
dado a luz a una niña a la que llamó Ana Libertad y que estaba en manos
de una familia: “A la nena la cría una familia bien, lo de Elena es
irreversible”, le explicó. Ana libertad continúa desaparecida.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The commentary is chilling as it seems to show Bergoglio’s and the
Archbishop Picchi’s disinterest and perhaps even approval in the murder
of the detained woman and abduction and (one does not even want to
think of) her delivery (by what means?) of her infant in the Navel
camp. The language used to describe the infant’s confiscation and her
placement/adoption by a “good family” is the coded military junta’s
language used in such cases.</p>
<p>Bestowing the name ‘Ana Libertad’ on the abducted baby implies that
the infant has been ‘liberated’ from her inappropriate birth mother,
who was selected for elimination. The prelate’s casual description of
Elena’s condition as ‘irreversible’ – that is, she was summarily
executed – also uses the coded language of the military dictatorship.
What we can see here is the collusion of the Catholic hierarchy with
the perverse language and practices of the military dictatorship in
their treatment of this one case. Marguerite Feitlowitz referred to the
‘lexicon of terror’, through which ordinary language was destroyed by
the common use of euphemisms to normalize and routinize crimes against
humanity. Imagine what Elena’s father and mother thought when being
told not to worry, their granddaughter was being raise in a good
Catholic military home, and that they need to seek no more, their
daughter no longer existed in this world.</p>
<p>Here is the fragment of then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio’s verbatim
testimony at the 2010 Tribunal regarding the knowledge and probable
complicity of the Catholic hierarchy in the dictatorship’s program of
confiscating infants from soon to be executed pregnant women in
detention:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Investigator: “When did you learn that children were being
confiscated during the dictatorship?”</em></p>
<p>Bergoglio: “That, um, quite recently … Ah, recently, some ten
years ago.”</p>
<p><em>I: “Would that be around the year 199X??” [sic]</em></p>
<p>B: “Maybe sometime around the time of the Trial of the Juntas.”</p>
<p><em>I: “ A bit earlier then.”</em></p>
<p>B: “A bit earlier. Around that time, more or less, I started to
find out about that”.</p>
<p><em>I :“ We have talked at various times about documentation that
could or could not be provided to the proceedings (trial/tribunal). I
would like to conclude by asking that we come to an agreement on the
manner in which the tribunal can gain access to this valuable
documentation, as it is public knowledge and widely known [literally,
notorious; it is being talked about and is widely known, almost
synonymous to public knowledge] that the Church has much of the
documentation. This is apparent in record of evidence given in various
testimonies, including testimonies that have been heard here in this
trial. So, before finishing this hearing, we need to come to an
agreement and a determination of the most expeditious manner by which
the tribunal can gain access to all of that valuable archival
documentation. [The lawyer seems to asking permission of the President
of the Tribunal to ask for these documents from Bergoglio].</em></p>
<p>President: – “Just ask for it, demand it, Doctor.”</p>
<p><em>I: I’m wondering if there will be an agreed upon way we can
find and get to see this documentation.</em></p>
<p><em>President: So the question is whether the gentleman
testifying will agree/permit a review of the [Church] files.</em></p>
<p>B: -Yes, I have no problem with that. I will instruct the
custodians of the archives to do so. In fact, we have received
documentation requests regarding other trials on the same topic, and
we sent what we had, whatever we had.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We can see that Cardinal Bergoglio is being treated very gently by
the lawyer-investigator, who seems to be seeking approval from the
President of the Triubunal to ask the Cardinal to release pertinent
Church documents to the Tribunal. The President says, ‘go on, don’t
be timid, just demand the documents’. But the lawyer continues to speak
with great hesitancy, “I am wondering if we might be able…” Bergoglio
replies that this isn’t the first time that Church documents on infant
confiscation have been requested and that he tells his archivists to
find them and to send them to the trial lawyers. Whether Bergoglio
ever turned over the documents requested, letters, communications with
the militray, or the baptismal records of little Ana Libertad and other
cases like hers is not known.<br>
</p>
<p><b>The Disappearance of Bergoglio’s Colleague and Former Boss, </b><b>Esther
Balestrino de </b><b> Careaga</b></p>
<p>The second allegation concerns the Tribunal’s investigation of a
military raid on a rural church during which three persons, two French
missionary nuns and a lay catechist , and personal friend of Bergoglio
were disappeared. In the following excerpt the judge and prosecutor
are more firm.</p>
<p>Here is an excerpt from the testimony:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Buenos Aires, 2010 Bergoglio testifies before TOF No5.<br>
disc 1 ID 4202826</p>
<p>Jose Mario Francisco and Regina Sivori Zamora (hereafter Z)</p>
<p><em>Z- What were your functions between 1974-1977?</em></p>
<p>B. – I was Provincial head of Society of Jesus until 8.12.79.</p>
<p><em>Z- Did you take note of the kidnapping of someone you knew
and of the two nuns in the Church of Santa Cruz in December 1977?</em></p>
<p>B. – Only through the media. It was a group of people who
gathered together to work for human rights. They were two French nuns
and an acquaintance of mine, Esther Balestrino de Careaga. (EB)</p>
<p><em>Z. -Do you know whether the hierarchy ever lodged any
complaints about this case?</em></p>
<p>B. – No I can’t excatly point that out, but I would assume so,
as those who are assigned to had been taken to report these things, as
the actions had taken place in a Catholic church.</p>
<p><em>Z. – Do any records exist in some archive of the Catholic
Church?</em></p>
<p>B. – I suppose so, but I don’t know for sure.</p>
<p><em>Z. –Are those files under your control?</em></p>
<p>B. – The central archive of the CEA (Conference of the Catholic
Bishops) is under the control of the CEA</p>
<p><em>Z. -And who supervises the CEA?</em></p>
<p>B. – I do.</p>
<p><em>Z. –So, could you locate it [the file]?</em></p>
<p>B. – I can look for it, but not sure I can find it.</p>
<p><em>Z. -In what circumstances did you know Ester Balestrino Carega
(EB)?</em></p>
<p>B. – She was head of the chemical analysis lab where I worked in
1953, 1954 and there was a good friendship between the two of us. She
was from Paraguay.</p>
<p><em>Z. -Did you try to do something when you learned of the the
kidnapping?</em></p>
<p>B. – It hurt me a lot trying to get in touch with a family member,
but I couldn’t. They (the family) seemed to be in hiding. One of her
daughters was detained and then released. I tried to contact people
who could do something for her.</p>
<p><em>Z- To whom are you referring?</em></p>
<p>B. – To people who could make things move, human rights people.</p>
<p><em>Z- Any public officials or authorities?</em></p>
<p>B. – No. Because this case fell under the jurisdiction of the
Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and I was Provincial of the Jesuits.</p>
<p><em>Z-. You were at one time in close contact with Mrs. de
Careaga?</em></p>
<p>B. – Quite a lot. (Bastante). I took the steps that I was able
to do.</p>
<p><em>Z. – Could you be more specific?</em></p>
<p>B. - I resorted to contacting those who could possibly find out
her whereabouts. Some ODH [Organization of Human Rights] people who
had access to authorities. I also talked to some Archdiocese official.
With Monsignor Olmedo, who was at the court.</p>
<p><em>Z. – And what did Monsignor Olmedo do?</em></p>
<p>B. – He said he had tried to make contact but he had no precise
information on where she was was arrested and all these things.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the extent of Bergoglio’s testimony on the case of his
missing colleague and the two kidnapped and executed French nuns. The
history of the disappeared nuns, and that of Esther Careaga
Ballestrino, is well documented.<b> </b>We will begin with Esther.</p>
<p>Soon after the coup, two of Esther’s sons, Manuel Carlos Cuevas and
Ives Domergue were kidnapped and disappeared. Then her daughter Ana
Maria Careaga, three months pregnant, was abducted on June 13, 1977.
She was taken to the secret detention center at <a
title="Centro clandestino de detención"
href="http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centro_clandestino_de_detenci%C3%B3n#Club_Atl.C3.A9tico"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://es.wikipedia.org']);">Club
Atlético</a> where she gave birth and lost her infant to the military’s
infant confiscation and cleansing project.</p>
<p>Esther was one of the founding organizers of the Madres de Plaza de
Mayo, and she worked with other human rights organizations. In October
1977 Esther’s daughter, Ana Maria, was released and Esther fled with
Ana Maria and her three remaining sons to Brazil and then to
Switzerland. Nonetheless, she returned to Argentina shorty afterwards
to continue the struggle against the disappearances until she herself
was disappeared, along with the two nuns and like them she was tortured
and thrown into the sea.</p>
<p>The Cardinal’s testimony was woefully incomplete. He did not mention
that Esther, his religiously committed colleague, had actually lost
two sons to the military dictatorship before Esther’s pregnant
daughter was abducted and her infant ‘liberated’ to a good Christian
military family. His testimony minimized the atrocity.</p>
<p>I first heard about the nuns from various sources in conjunction
with my research on the <em>Colonia Montes de Oca,</em> the National
Asylum for the Mentally Impaired (deficient) which became not so much a
detention camp as a death camp during the period of the dirty war. In
1964 Jorge Videla, then a Captain in the military, deposited one of
his sons at the Colonia where the youngster died in 1971. The nuns had
cared for Videla’s son when he was a toddler and before he was
institutionalized at an asylum where the poorest people of Argentina
abandoned their mentally disabled children and adult relatives. During
the Dirty War, Montes de Oca became a veritable death camp.</p>
<p>Recently, a book has been published by Andrea Basconi, <em>Elena
Holmberg, La Mujer que Sabia Demasiado</em> (<i>Elena Holmberg, The
Women Who Knew too Much</i>) about the life and death of a career
diplomat from a prominent Argentine military family. Elena Holmberg
was summoned from her office at the Argentine Embassy in Paris in 1978
to meet with her superiors. She was kidnapped and executed at the
command Navel Officer Emilio Massera. <b> </b>The book<b> </b>includes
a detailed account of the two French nuns, Sister Leonie Duquet and
Sister Alice Domon, who came to Argentina as missionaries in the
1950s. They took up a special mission, caring for the disabled (<i>discapacitado</i>),
teaching them their catechism and trying to help them learn the basics
of reading and writing, among those able to reach that capacity. One if
the children they cared for in 1954 was the four year old son of Jorge
Videla.</p>
<p>Eugenio Alejandro Videla was born in 1951, when their father, the
future dictator was a military captain. He and his wife, Alicia Raquel
Hartridge, then had two other children. Alexander was the third child
in a family that would eventually have seven children. Alejandro was
born disabled, and severely mentally incapacitated. His birth
devastated the Videla family and the Captain requested a temporary
position in the United States.</p>
<p>In 1999 Videla told journalist Guido Braslavsky about his disabled
son: “The Army assigned me to a position in the United States in
1956 so that I could find specialized medical treatment for my
son’s illness. It was a genetic problem. But I was turned away by the
doctors. They told us that parts of his brain had not developed and
that we had best put him away, commit him in an institution where he
could be taken care of.” [The interview is cited in the book <i>El
Dictador </i> by Maria Seoane and Vicente Muleiro.]</p>
<p>Videla accepted a position in the United States as an Assistant
to General Julio Lagos who was then a diplomat heading Argentina’s
delegation to the <i>Junta Interamericana de Defensa </i> (JID), an
organization concerned with fighting the Marxist insurgency in Latin
America at the beginning of the cold war. It was most likely during
this period that Videla developed his extreme right political ideology.</p>
<p>Before leaving for the U.S., Videla and his wife relied on the help
of the two missionary nuns, Renée Léonie Duquet and Alice Domon.
Sister Léonie, born in France in 1916, arrived in Argentina in 1949. A
few years later, in 1955, she began working with the cousin of Videla’s
wife, Father Ismael Calcagno at the CASA de Catechesis of Morón, a
school for the religious education of disabled children. They were
joined in this work by two other nuns, Gabrielle Echevarne and
Alice Domon.</p>
<p>The nuns’ strong Catholic faith impressed Jorge Videla, who was
deeply involved with the Christian Family Movement under the Bishop of
Morón. In 1997 Father Calcagno said that “both Leonie and Domon were
my assistants at the Casa of Catechesis. Videla knew them both very
well.” In this Catholic center in Morón, the two nuns worked with
children with special needs and disabilities, among them Videla’s son.
The priest said Alexander often took walks in the countryside with
the nuns, who tried to teach the children to read using a special
French method. The children learned slowly, but some did
learn. Alexander was not one of them. The center also took care of
homeless children and among these were four children of Videla’s first
cousin, Julia. Videla and the nuns had many interactions between
1953 and 1956, at which point Videla left for the United States.</p>
<p>Over time the spiritual formation of the nuns changed, shaped by the
new philosophy of liberation theology. They began to speak of ”an
option for the poor, for the needy” while criticizing their old
acquaintance, Videla, as choosing another option in support of the
“military, power, blood and fire.” Videla’s faith, the nuns said, was
all about “Nation and God, God and Nation (<i>Patrie Dieu, Dieu and
Patrie</i>).</p>
<p>The nuns embrace of liberation theology proved to be their undoing.
On December 13<sup>th</sup>, 1977 Videla’s Secretary General broke the
news of their kidnapping, several days before the nuns were drugged and
thrown into the sea. Videla had time to investigate the reports that
Léonie and Alice had been abducted by a task force of ESMA along with
the founder of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Azucena Ballestrino Villa,
Esther Careaga, and other relatives of the disappeared. Lieutenant
Alfredo Astiz ordered the raid on the Church of Santa Cruz where the
nuns had been abducted.</p>
<p>Under intense international pressure, the military regime announced
that the nuns had been kidnapped by the ‘terrorist’ Commando
Montonero. Meanwhile, in the basement of ESMA, the nuns were
interrogated, tortured, and then loaded on a death flight on December
18<sup>th</sup> and thrown, still alive, into the sea. A few days
later their bodies were washed up on the beaches of Santa Teresita.
They were buried as unidentified persons in General Lavalle cemetery.</p>
<p>Three decades later, members of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology
Team (EEAA) exhumed the graves and were able to identify the bodies of
Sister Leonie and of Bergoglio’s good friend, Esther Ballestrino de
Careaga.</p>
<p><b>Orlando and Francisco: the Jesuit Seminarians </b></p>
<p>The third accusation, and the one that has received the greatest
attention, concerns the role Bergoglio played in the disappearance,
detention, interrogation and torture of two of his own Jesuit priests
in training: Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics.</p>
<p>Yorio was a native son of Argentina, Jalics was an immigrant from
his native Hungary. The questions that raised concern were whether
Father Bergoglio, then Jesuit Superior, exposed the two priests under
his supervision to risk of abduction when he made the decision to
dismiss them from the Society of Jesus. By cutting the two men loose
of their juridical status as active Jesuit clerics, Bergoglio,
knowingly or not, signaled to the military that ‘these two are no
longer my disciples.’</p>
<p>It has all the appearances of a betrayal. Just a few days after
their dismissal, the priests were abducted and taken to ESMA where
they were detained for interrogation, tortured, and after five months
released, dropped from a helicopter on the outskirts of Buenos Aires,
where they were found, drugged, dazed, and in very poor physical
condition. Bergoglio arranged to have them picked up and quickly exiled
one of the men (Yorio) to Rome and the other (Jalics) to Germany.</p>
<p>Cardinal Bergoglio’s Testimony to the 2010 Tribunal, thirty years
after the events occurred, is very long and extremely frustrating.</p>
<p>Argentina is now a democratic country. It is no longer being run by
state terrorists. Throughout the hearing Bergoglio refuses to name a
single individual, living or dead, any military officers, any
Ecclesiastical administrators, bishops or priests who might have been
responsible for the abduction of the two innocent young priests in his
charge, his own protégées. The language Bergoglio’s uses at times is
abstract to the point of being absurd and at other times sly and
sarcastic. I have extracted some examples:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Z .(Tribunal Investigator) – In what year and under what
circumstances did you meet and get to know Orlando Yorio and Francisco
Jalics?</em></p>
<p>B. – Yorio I first met in 1961, 1962 in the Colegio Maximo,
which is the center for Jesuit Studies, where the faculties of
philosophy and theology are located. Later he was a theology professor
in the area of Trinitate. I met Jalics in 1961 in the same place. He
was professor of fundamental theology and a spiritual advisor to
students….</p>
<p><em> Z. – Do you recall any problems that emerged with [Jesuit]
support for Padre Yorio in 1975-1976? … any accusations of some kind
within the Society of Jesus concerning Yorio and Jalics fulfilling
their priestly duties?</em></p>
<p>B. – Nothing in particular. At that time any priest who worked
with the poorest sectors was subject to suspicions or accusations. In
June 1973 I took a trip to La Rioja with the previous provincial to
intervene in the case of the two Jesuits who were engaged in a
mission working with the poor and they were subject to this kind of
talk. ..It was very common that someone working with the poor was
seen as a leftist, and that was not only at that time. Just two months
ago, a layman who works in one of the slums of Buenos Aires heard a
comment, “So you are working with the leftists”. It’s something that
existed even before [the Coup]. Allegations of ideological leanings,
of belonging to subversive organizations — for that was the term that
was used at that time — by a certain sector of the population were
common.</p>
<p><em>Z. – All the accusations came from that sector?</em></p>
<p>B. – From people who did not agree with that pastoral option
(i.e., working with the poor).</p>
<p><em>Z. Do any of these people have names, either first or last
names?</em></p>
<p>B. – No. Certain sectors, certain people. In fact when [Jesuit
General Superior] Father Arrupe and I visited [the two Jesuits] in
August 1974 in La Rioja, a very provincial place, many sectors of La
Rioja society publicly expressed to us their discomfort with
Jesuits working among the poorest.</p>
<p><em>Z. – Please, try to clarify with some precision [without the
generalities] the questions I am asking about Yorio and Jalics.</em></p>
<p>B. – There were various sectors of the society that were adverse
to certain ideologies (18.20) Some social and cultural sectors
disagreed with the pastoral option which was a clear-cut choice for the
Church.</p>
<p><em>Z. – Please make an effort to define, name and surname, some
members of the Society of Jesus, of the Catholic Church, of the
Catholic hierarchy who shared this questioning of pastoral work with
the poor.</em></p>
<p>B. – The Army questioned everyone who shared the pastoral option.</p>
<p><em> Z. – But whom exactly?</em></p>
<p>B. – Various sectors, across the board. It was spoken, it was
said, it was was published in the newspapers.</p>
<p><em>Z. – Did you speak of it?</em></p>
<p>B. – It was talked about about in communities, in the fields, in
churches, in parishes. Above all, in some sectors of the Church. And
also outside the Church.</p>
<p><em>Z. – But you don’t remember any particular case, a Bishop or
a Cardinal?</em></p>
<p>B. – No, because it was something that was general, very common.
Those comments were not necessarily an accusation but rather a general
perception or common sense … the general view that priests who worked
with the poor were lefists.</p>
<p><em>Z. – That was a very dangerous perception, because it was the
very same accusation used by the dictatorship to victimize people.
What you are saying does not help us to locate the problem in a more
concrete way. Where did these allegations come from?</em></p>
<p>B. – Jalics and Yorio left the Society of Jesus before the
military coup and to find a particular event that we can benchmark it
might be the death of Fr. Mugica, which happened <em>before</em> the
coup. [The execution of Father Carlos Mungica, a priest of the poor,
took place in May 11, 1974 following his Saturday morning services on
May 11 at the San Francisco Solano Parish. He was killed by a hit man
for the AAA, Anti-Communist Alliance. He is considered a kind of
Catholic martyr. --NS-H]</p>
<p><em>Z. – I don’t understand. The question was whether you could
specify where and from whom these accusations [against the two Jesuits]
came from, which you have simply downplayed here.</em></p>
<p>B. – I want to clarify the importance of the question. I did not
discount the importance of these sentiments and accusatioms.They were
serious, they were slanderous. Slander is a serious sin. I do not
underestimate its importance. But the two men already lived in that
[political] environment, and those who made that option [the option for
the poor] understood what they were getting into. In that respect one
was accustomed to hearing such allegations even before the military
coup…</p>
<p><em>Z. – Did the general of the Jesuits know that there were
accusations made against this group [that included Jalics and Yorio]?
Did the General [the global head of the Jesuits] share those
[critical] views?</em></p>
<p>[no answer]</p>
<p><em>Z. – When did you stop teaching Padre Yorio ?</em></p>
<p>B. – I do not remember.</p>
<p><em>Z. – And therefore you don’t know why.</em></p>
<p>B. – They came and went because the courses were cyclical.</p>
<p><em>Z. - You had an intimate knowledge of Padre Yorio?</em></p>
<p>B. – Knowledge that was normal among Jesuits. We were not
friends, not enemies. But we had a good enough relationship.</p>
<p><em>Z. – You have not told me why you stopped giving them classes?</em></p>
<p>B. – I do not remember, but my point is that the character of the
classes was cyclical.</p>
<p><em>Z. Do you recall being interviewed about the character of
Padre Jalics and Yorio?</em></p>
<p>B. – Yes, and not just about those two, but about all the
Jesuits working within that primary option for the poor. It was
common to communicate about these things and to see how they were
working out.</p>
<p><em>Z. – In the case of Yorio and Jalics?</em></p>
<p>B. – Yes, like everyone else. It was quite common.</p>
<p><em>Z. – It would be important if you could specify who was asking
about them,</em> <em>what interviews you had, and what was your
reaction as Jesuit Provincial as part of the hierarchy?</em></p>
<p>B. – Our relationship was good.</p>
<p><em> Z. – No. I want to know about your reaction [not the
relatiomship] . (27.55)</em></p>
<p>B. – I always take prudent measures. It should be clarified that
they only worked in the poor communities, they did not live there.They
lived in the neighborhood of Rivadavia in the neighborhood, where they
did their weekly spritual exercises, their managerial and other
spiritual, classes, especially Padre Jalics, who was a writer. They
only worked with the poor on the weekends.</p>
<p><i>(<b>Excerpts from Disk 2)</b></i></p>
<p><em>Z. -Was there any understanding between the ecclesiastical
authority and the military junta that before they would detrain a
priest they would inform the bishop on whoever was in charge?</em></p>
<p>B. – No.</p>
<p><em>Z. – You never heard on anything like this?</em></p>
<p>B. – No</p>
<p><em>Z. – Do you know what happened to Jalics and Yorio and a
group of catechists from the barrio Rivadavia?</em></p>
<p>B. – On what date?</p>
<p><em>Z. -In May 1976.</em></p>
<p>B. – Are you referring to the kidnapping?</p>
<p><em> Z. - I can not suggest an answer to my question.</em></p>
<p>B. – On about 22 or 23 May there was a raid and they were
arrested. (gesticulating something with his finger).</p>
<p><em>Z. – Do you know who were the people arrested, what the
operation was about?</em></p>
<p>B. - I know that Yorio and Jalics were detainees along with a
group of lay catechists, some of whom were released, I was told, in
the first days.</p>
<p><em>Z. – Do you know that their licenses [to practice as clerics]
were suspended?</em></p>
<p>B. – I heard that it was said, but not that I was aware of it. The
fact that they were doing pastoral work in the barrios would indicate
that they [the government] could do that. (take away their license).
It would be difficult for the pastor of a church to admit that they
were woirking with, collaborating with a priest with a formally
suspended license.</p>
<p><em>Z. – Formally? And how else coulld it be? Only a judge has
the authority to suspend </em> <em>a license, correct?</em></p>
<p><em>Judge - But the judge depends on the local bishop to give the
order, correct? </em></p>
<p>B. – It depends on the religious order that they left. There was
a period of transition. And after they are incardinated [installed
officially in a parish] their license dependents on the local Bishop.</p>
<p><em>Judge – And during the the transition?</em></p>
<p>B. – I told them they could keep officiating at Mass until
incardinaran.</p>
<p><em>Judge – Can the Bishop deny the order? The authorization? </em></p>
<p>B. -It’s possible. But I never was aware of such a thing.</p>
<p><em>Z. – But in this case wasn’t there a benevolent bishop?</em></p>
<p>B. – You mean the local bishop, the Bishop of Buenos Aires,
Cardinal Aramburu.</p>
<p><em>Z- Didn’t Aramburu make a decision regarding them.</em></p>
<p>B. – Not that I am not aware.</p>
<p><em>Z. – Could it have happened?</em></p>
<p>B. – Without telling me?</p>
<p><em> Z. – During the transition they can act like any other
priest?</em></p>
<p>B.- We leave the interpretation up to them.</p>
<p><em>Z. – They were not in the same legal status as any other
priest?</em></p>
<p>B. – No, because they were in transition.</p>
<p><em> Z. – What is the consequences of the suspension of a license?</em></p>
<p>B. - It determines who can not exercise the ministry. The license
is jurisdictional.</p>
<p><em>Z. – Did you consider that now they were in grave danger
given the political climate of living in a situation in which they are
no longer under the protrection of the Church, that during the
transition it was even diffivult for them to celebrate Mass?</em></p>
<p>B. – No, they could celebrate Mass without difficulty, because I
told them they could do that. As for whether they were in a situation
of exposure to big risk …Yes, I think there was a greater exposure,
but relatively, because they knew they had access to the provincial
curia of Jesuits, with whom they could come to live, and who were in
dialogue with the Church, with the provincial. …</p>
<p><em>Z. – Can you help us evaluate this from the point of view of
the hierarchy? What were the links between these priests who made the
option for the poor … and the decision to be … be without a bishop, to
leave the Church without any support?</em></p>
<p><em> Z. – Do you know who it felt for them to be in a position
of being unprotected by the Church.</em></p>
<p>B. – No. I know otherwise, by the conversations they had with
me. They had no feeling of helplessness.</p>
<p><em>Z. – Are there any Church records about the suspension of
their licensing?</em></p>
<p>B. – Si, usually, but not always. It depends on the Bishop…</p>
<p><em>Z. – Are there written records, archives somewhere?</em></p>
<p>B. -Si.</p>
<p><em>Z. – And that file is up to you now?</em></p>
<p>B. – Si.</p>
<p><em>Z. – How did you become aware of what happened?</em></p>
<p>B. – By a phone call, at noon, a call from somebody in the barrio
who I did not know. They said that there was a raid and they took the
two priests as prisoners along with some lay people. Padre Dourron was
riding his bike and he saw how they took them down the street of
Varela.</p>
<p><em>Z. – You didn’t ask any questions about it?</em></p>
<p>B. – No. After a shock like that you only remember afterwards to
ask questions…</p>
<p><em>Presiding Judge- Do you remember what you did after hearing
this news.</em></p>
<p>B. -Yes, I started to move, to speak with priests who were said to
have access to the police, the armed forces. We moved quickly.</p>
<p><em>Judge President- Did you get any information that was
different from what you were given by the anonymous neighbor?</em></p>
<p>B. -I confirmed what had happened, and that no one knew where they
were. Then we began to hear that the ones who took them away were
members of the Navy (Marines).</p>
<p><em>Z. – You don’t recall who made the call to you, or who said
that they were Navy people? Did you inform the church hierarchy?</em></p>
<p>B. - I informed all the members of the Socirty de Jesus and the
Archbishopric. It happened on a Sunday and I alerted Cardinal Aramburu,
and also to the papal nuncio,Monsignor Laghi on Monday or Tuesday, I
think?</p>
<p><em>Z. – How did you learn about the involvement of the Navy?</em></p>
<p>B – Common talk, <em>vox populi,</em> they pointed to there… In
fact I met twice with the Navy Commander, Massera. He was the first
to hear me and he told me that he was going to look into it. I told
him that these priests did not do anything unusual. He said nothing in
reply. After a couple of months ppassed I requested a second
interview, while continuing other steps. I was almost sure that they
had them [at ESMA]. The second interview was very ugly, and it lasted
no more than ten minutes. [they had a disagreement] I said, look,
what ever happens maybe it is is better to talk with Monsignor
Tortolo, right? Then I got up and left.</p>
<p><em>Z. – Where did the the rumors that the Navy had them come from?</em></p>
<p>B. -No, it was common talk, the vox populi. People with whom you
spoke, said it was the Navy [ESMA].</p>
<p><em>Z. – What people?</em></p>
<p>B. – The people who had influence, people with connections with
judges, police, military, with the Interior Ministry, with the
government. Everything pointed to the Navy.</p>
<p><em>Z. – Do you remember the name of any of those people who had
easier access</em> <em>to power?</em></p>
<p>B. – No.</p>
<p><em>Z- Were any of them Church people, ecclesiastical superiors,
like the Cardinal?</em></p>
<p>B- There was only dispair of their friends, acquaintances.</p>
<p><em>Z- But the fact that you heard that they were kidnapped by
the Navy is very important data. If you could make a effort to
remember who indicated this knowledge, that was plausible enough that
you yourself believed, it to be true, so that you approcahed Massera,
it would be a serious source…</em></p>
<p>B- I told you that was just common talk, <em>vox populi, vox Dei,</em>
there was not a person, there was general agreement. I do not remember
who identified them as the Navy task force</p>
<p><em>Z- You don’t remember who phoned, you don’t remember who said
it was the Navy.This is why we are asking you to identify at least one
person.</em></p>
<p>(Page 13 of 56)</p>
<p>(Skipping down to page 17)</p>
<p><em>Z- Did you seek contact with families of Jalics and Yorio to
let them what had occurred, given that Yorio and Jalics were
kidnapped?</em></p>
<p>B- No. I know there were other Jesuits with information claiming
that they were handed over to a unit of the Navy.</p>
<p><em>Z- Why didn’t you seek direct contact?</em></p>
<p>B- No reason, but as I was moving looking for contacts, I found
that this was the best way to prioceed. Nothing was excluded.</p>
<p><em>Z- Mr Bergoglio, when did you learn that the priests Jalics
and Yorio had been released, and when did you meet with them? </em></p>
<p>B- I contacted Padre Yorio to notify us. I said ‘Do not tell me
where you are or move from where you are. Send me a person who can
communicate where we can find you. Because at that point we had to take
all precautions…</p>
<p><em>P.18 (extract)</em></p>
<p>B- The Papal Nuncio behaved well and accepted my suggestion to
accompany them [Yorio and Jalics] to the police dept. With the Papal
secretary, covering diplomatic relations, nothing bad cpould happen
to them inside there. I met Yorio various times times to see to
their future…. We decided that the the best thing for Yorio would be to
to go to Rome to study canon law. In Rome I saw him several times
during my travels there. After a while we fell out of contact. With
Jalics iot was was faster. He was sent immediately to the United
States where his mother was living.</p>
<p><em>President-What did they tell you?</em></p>
<p>B- They told me everything. They were hooded, shackled, that after
a some time moved to another place that they thought was a house nearby
ESMA, where they were convinced that they had been kept for most of the
time. They were sure it was the same area because of the noise of
planes taking off and landing. And there they was nearby a field of
canuelas.</p>
<p><em>President- Did they describe the condition of the detention?</em></p>
<p>B- Yes, it was precarious and painful , and humiliating.</p>
<p><em>President- The details?</em></p>
<p>B- Humiliating about going to the bathroom. Nothing much said
about how they were fed.</p>
<p><em>Z- Physical abuse?</em></p>
<p>B. They did not say anything about that . From their general
account one had the impression that there was a great deal of torture
in detention but I don’t recall any of the specifies of the torture.</p>
<p><em>President: Beatings? Blows, electric currents to the body?</em></p>
<p>B- I don’t remember them saying anything about that, they did not
speak of it, they do not say that it had not happened. I do not
mention them.</p>
<p><em> President-Anything else?</em></p>
<p>B-Insults. But those insults, were to say look at where you
went, Jesus says that the poor are happy in spirit, not when they work
with you.</p>
<p><em> Z- Once you heard all this what steps did you take?</em></p>
<p>B- In what sense?</p>
<p><em>Z- Legal, public, internal Church, informing the hierarchies.</em></p>
<p>B- The first step was to ensure their physical security. So I
advised them not to say where they were. The second step of my concern
was to get them out of the country. Of course, I told the local
bishop to inform Rome by telephone. And I secure the future in Rome
for Yorio in Rome, and in the Diocese of Quilmes.</p>
<p><em>President. Do you reacll making any complaint to the
authorities or to the </em> <em>court?</em></p>
<p>B. – I do not remember and I think it was decided to contact them
them via ecclesiastical networks, through the Archbishop, or CEA,
remember if these complaints were jopined with other other complaints
and presented all together.</p>
<p><em>President- Any of this in written records? Can you access
written records?</em></p>
<p>B- Si. I can try to find them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The fact is, however, that the Jesuits did not request to be
released from their priesthood, they were dismissed by their Jesuit
Provincial. They were being disciplined for having refused
Bergoglio’s order to give up their ‘social work’ among the poor
because it was giving scandal to conservative Catholics who saw this
‘pastoral option for the poor’ as subversive and degrading to the noble
Jesuit tradition, a tradition interpreted by Bergoglio.</p>
<p>Under Jorge Mario’s leadership, the Society of Jesus, was shaped
into a theological phalanx of the right-wing dictatorship. Bergoglio
did not answer the question put to him about whether the Superior
General of the Society of Jesus (worldwide) shared Bergoglio’s
critical view of liberation theology and its preferential option to the
poor. If so, he would have had to say that the answer was no.</p>
<p>The crowning moment in the career of the Jesuit Superior General
Pedro Arrupe, of Spain, was his decree in 1975 that redefined the
work of the Jesuits as supporting social justice. Arrupe was very
conscious of the fact that this degree would cause endless grief to
Jesuits working in Latin America at this time when fascist
dictatorships prevailed in the Southern cone and in Central America.</p>
<p><b><i>Was Jorge Mario Bergoglio Complicit with the Dictatorship?</i></b></p>
<p>This is the question that has been reverberating around the world
since Jorge Mario’s election to the papacy. Not even someone as
sanctified as Jon Sobrino, the “Don Quixote of the Disinherited”, a
priest who laid his body down in defense of the people of El Salvador
during the counter-insurency war there, dares to pass judgement on the
new Pope.</p>
<p>I have far less competency or right to do so. But having worked in
Brazil during the dictatorship, and South Africa at the bitter end of
the anti-apartheid struggle and as a student of structural and
political violence and its effects on individuals at critical times,
this much I know. It is unfair to ask that humans behave like saints
during totalitarian catastrophes like the Argentine Dirty War. The
imposition of a culture of terror that destroyed human solidarity, that
made everyone suspicious of every other one, a regime under which
parents suspected children, and children their parents of being ‘into
things’ and who sometimes reported them to authorities is not a new
revelation. Not one among us knows how they would behave under such
compromised circumstances, when one’s own existence as well as of those
for whom one is responsible are at stake.</p>
<p>How does complicity work? Sometimes it works directly, but far more
often it works indirectly and passively, for example, thorough useless
negotiations with the terrorist. Sometimes it works through a kind of
battlefield triage, through sacrificial violence – letting some go, so
that many others might live. My guess is that Father Bergoglio was a
tormented soul. It is certainly clear that he had no natural
inclination or taste for the new social gospel of the poor and
political consciousness raising. Indeed, as Jon Sorino notes,
Bergoglio was ‘no Oscar Romero’, referring to the martyred Archbishop
of El Salvador who was murdered by the fascists in San Salvador on
March 24, 1980.</p>
<p>Neither was he a Dom Helder Camara, the little Red Archbishop of
Recife, noted by George Monbiot in the <i>Guardian.</i> Dom Helder
blessed my work as an anthropologist in Pernambuco just as he had
defended me in 1965 when officials of the 5<sup>th</sup> Army of
Brazil interrogated me about a ‘subversive’ residents’ association,
UPAC (Union for the People of Alto do Cruzeiro) in the shantytown of
Alto Do Cruzeiro. The original damage had been done by another
Catholic prelate who, along with some local latifundistas, had turned
me and several leaders of UPAC in to the military. I admired that
unnamed Catholic priest, to whom I had made my confessions, and was
sad to learn that he was a conspirator with the dictatorship, and he
continued to be so up throughout the 20 year dictatorship, though we
met up without rancor in 1982 in Recife.</p>
<p>The truth is likely to be tangled, that of a conflicted prelate,
then Provincial leader of the Society of Jesus in Buenos Aires, who
removed two of his ‘wayward’ priests, Orlando Yorio and Francisco
Jalics, from active duty in a poor parish in the rural barrio of
Rivadavia, where the worked on weekends with a group of local
catechists commmited to what was then called the pastoral preferential
option for the poor. Fired by their Provincial, the priests were
without any protrection from militray terrorism during this turbulent
period. Cardinal Bergoglio acknowledged as much. Orlando and Francisco
were, in effect, exposed as rejected Jesuits. One week later, in full
view of their parishioners, Jalics and Yorio were surrounded by
military men who swooped down on them in the street, kidnapped, hooded,
and shoved into a car and carried them to the secret detention and
concentration camp at ESMA, where for five months they were physically
abused, humiliated, and interrogated under torture.</p>
<p>Orlando Yorio believed that he and Francisco Jalics were handed over
to the military by Father Bergoglio. Yorio told Argentine journalist
Hortaio Verbitsdsky that “he had the impression that their own
provincial, Bergoglio, was present during the interrogations [at ESMA]
as one of the interrogators had external knowledge of theological
questions.” By this Yorio meant that the interrogation went into
details of theological doctrine far beyond the competency of a secular
Navy officer. But Yorio was presumably blindfolded during these
interrogations during which he was beaten. After his release from ESMA,
which may have been negotiated by Bergoglio during his meetings with
Navy Commander Emilio Massera, Yorio lived in Rome for several years
after which he returned to Argentina where he served as a priest in
Quilmes diocese outside Buenos Aires, under a progressive Bishop who
opposed the Cardinal. It was during that time ,2005, that Yorio
denounced Bergoglio in a legal suit through a human rights lawyer.</p>
<p>These accusations led to Borgoglio’s testimony before the judicial
tribunal to prosecute dirty war criminals. While the tribunal did not
prosecute Bergoglio it is clear from the transcript of the hearings
that the attorney and the judge were frustrated with Bergoglio’s
evasive, sometimes absurdist, answers to their pointed questions about
his knowledge about who might have identified the young priests as
possible subversives.</p>
<p>As for Francisco Jalics, he went to live in Germany as a
contemplative priest, dedicated to meditation and spiritual writing. A
few of his books have been translated into English including one on
Contemplative Retreat: An Introduction to The Contemplative Way of Life
and to the Jesus Prayer. The method that Father Jalics presents is the
path of surrender to God, what Horatio Verbitsky, describes as the path
to oblivion. Father Jalics is now an old man, who goes by the name of
Franz, rather than Francisco. He once confided to Verbitsky that he
suffered many years of resentment toward Father Borgogio, but that he
has now renounced it. This decision conforms to his writings, the
writings of a mystic. On March 15<sup>th</sup> Father Jalics released
a letter to the public in which he writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>”After we were set free, I left Argentina. It was only years later
that we had the opportunity to discuss the events with Father Bergoglio
who in the meantime had been appointed Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
Following that, we celebrated Mass publicly together and hugged
solemnly. I am reconciled with the events and on my part, consider the
matter to be closed. I wish Pope Francis God’s rich blessings for his
office - Father Franz Jalics SJ 15 March 2013.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The testimony of the two kidnapped and tortured Jesuits, one now
dead and reconciled, the other having entered a state of reclusion from
the world and reconciled with his former Superior, is probably as far
as this story can go. Now it is up to the Pope Francis to allow the
Holy Spirit to reconcile him to his new destiny. It is possible that
in choosing the name Francis, Jorge Mario, had Father Francisco Jalics
in mind as much as Saint Francis of Assisi. Perhaps, Franz
(“Francisco”] Jalics is quite aware of that and the two are joined in
mutual recognition of the terror that, each in his own way, they had
suffered under the Generals and the Dirty War. What matters now,
today, is not so much reconciliation and conversion.</p>
<p>Will Francis 1 have the courage to undo the harm of the previous two
Pope’s who extinguished the hope that liberation theology priests and
catechists like Francisco and Orlando, like Bergogio’s companheira,
Esther Careaga Ballestrino, and the French missionary nuns brought into
poor slums and rural villas?</p>
<p>How will Francis I respond to Jon Sobrono’s three challenges to
him: To fix the unbearable and untenable situation of women vis-à-vis
the Church, to recognize and value the indigenous peoples of world,
and to love Mother Earth. I could add many of my own wishes to the new
Pope.</p>
<p>But my question is this: Will Francis I make a full and complete
confession to his own Confessor? Will he make amends? Will he resist
the new temptataions he will have to face as Papa to a billion or so
Catholics? If so, then God can forgive Jorge Mario. But not until then.</p>
<p><em><strong>Nancy Scheper-Hughes</strong> is professor of medical
anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the
author of <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520075374/counterpunchmaga"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.amazon.com']);">Death
Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil</a>. Her new
book “The Ghosts of Montes de Oca: Naked Life and the Medically
Disappeared – A Hidden Subtext of the Argentine Dirty War” is
forthcoming.</em></p>
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