Shakira performs at the UN in honor of Pope Francis

Shakira performed for Pope Francis at the UN today (Friday), Shakira - Imagine (Live at the UN's General Assembly 2015):

The text at her YouTube channel says, "Shakira, before the Pope at the UN in NYC, dedicates her performance of John Lennon's Imagine to Aylan and Galip Kurdi and all the children turned refugees due to the Syrian war / Shakira, frente al Papa en la ONU, dedica su actuación a los hermanos Aylan y Galip Kurdi y a los niños refugiados por la guerra."

I can't quite tell from the reports I've seen, but it seems as though the Pope may have left the Assembly hall before she sang. (Shakira le canta 'Imagine' al Papa en la ONU El Periódico 25.09.2015)

Also on Shakira's agenda was meeting with the attorneys of her former boyfriend Antonio de la Rúa to try to settle a lawsuit in which De la Rúa is demanding a portion of her earnings from the time they were together. (Shakira viaja a Nueva York para ver al Papa y arreglar cuentas con su ex El Espectador 24.09.2015)

I don't see Shakira in the following video herself, although she has very publicly expressed her solidarity with it. (Shakira, Santana, y Gloria Estefan cantarán contra Donald Trump El Espectador/EFE 24.09.2015)

It's a video made in solidarity with American immigrants and American-born Latinos against the racist, xenophobic, God-hating immigrant-bashing being practiced by Donald Trump and the supporters of his white-trash bigotry, Video musical "Todos Somos Mexicanos" Univision Noticias 09/21/2015:

The Catholic Church and divorce

The Catholic Voice, a generally conservative-leaning paper of the Oakland (CA) diocese, ran this brief item in its 08/12/2013 print edition, title "Speaking of Divorce:

VATICAN CITY-When Pope Francis spoke to journalists about the need for a stronger Catholic pastoral approach to marriage and to divorced people, he made a parenthetical reference to how the Orthodox churches handle the breakup of marriages differently. "The Orthodox have a different practice," he told reporters July 28 during his flight back to Rome from Rio de Janeiro. The Orthodox "follow the theology of 'oikonomia' (economy or stewardship), as they call it, and give a second possibility; they permit" a second marriage. While the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain both use the English term "ecclesiastical divorce" when referring to the use of "oikonomia" to permit a second marriage, Orthodox scholars and the websites of both archdioceses make clear that the Orthodox practice differs from both a Catholic annulment and a civil divorce. it! Unlike an annulment, which declares that a union was invalid from the beginning, the Orthodox decree does not question the initial validity of a sacramental marriage and unlike a civil divorce it does not dissolve a marriage. Rather, the Orthodox describe it as a recognition that a marriage has ended because of the failure or sin of one or both spouses.

Was that a deliberately enigmatic trial balloon from the Pope about liberalizing the Church's position on divorce? Or was he just chatting about something that interested him?

Something from last year that I thought worth flagging.

Tags: jorge mario bergoglio, pope francis i

Papal revolution? Seriously? Maybe it's time to take a deep breath

John Allen Jr. has been inclined to friendly reporting on the current Pope Francis I/Jorge Bergoglio. He was too willing in my view to brush off real concerns about Bergoglio's role during the Argentine military dictatorship of 1976-83. (See Hard questions about Francis in Argentina and a lesson from Chile National Catholic Reporter 04/12/2013.

And in A revolution underway with Pope Francis National Catholic Reporter 08/05/2013, he seems to be letting his enthusiasm for the current Pope get him carried away. He writes that "everyone, it seems, knows that Francis is trying to engineer a Catholic glasnost." Or at least that's his impression reporting from Rome. He's seeing a lot in what looks to me is still Francis' honeymoon period:

In terms of public opinion, Francis is already on the cusp of achieving the iconic status of Nelson Mandela, a figure of unquestioned moral authority. It's telling that during his trip to Brazil, protagonists in the nation's current unrest virtually tripped over one another in a contest to see who could demonstrate more deference and respect.

There's also a sense in which Francis is the "Teflon pope," in that nothing bad seems to stick. When anything scandalous happens, reaction isn't to blame the pope, but to see it as additional proof of why he's needed.

Allen was considerably more cautious in Francis and the risk of overheated expectations National Catholic Reporter 04/26/2013:

Yet it's an open question whether Francis will move fast enough and far enough to satisfy the moderates most elated by his election and who have already projected a fairly elaborate set of hopes and dreams onto his embryonic pontificate.

The truth is, in some ways it's surprising wariness hasn't already set in.

In his very first homily, in the Mass celebrated with the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel the day after his election, Francis quoted the French novelist Léon Bloy: "Anyone who does not pray to the Lord prays to the devil." Had someone been so inclined, that line could have been seen as spectacularly insensitive to non-Christians. If it had been a pope who came into office carrying the baggage of being "God's Rottweiler" rather than a man who was already drawing rave reviews for humility and simplicity, it's not difficult to imagine the contretemps that would have ensued.

On Tuesday, Francis celebrated Mass in the Pauline Chapel for his name day, the feast of St. George, and included this line: "It is not possible to find Jesus outside the church." Once again, it's easy to imagine how that would have played had it been Benedict.

In reality, it's unlikely that on most matters of faith and morals Francis will represent any real departure from either John Paul II or Benedict XVI, and sooner or later he'll likely draw the same mixed reactions, even if the most intense disappointment in his case comes from another quarter.

Oddly, even in that post and in the 04/12/2013 one linked above, Allen softpedals the harshness of Bergoglio's opposition to same-sex marriage, which is now legal in Argentina.

And I think more recently that people have seen things that aren't there in Pope Francis' recent statement on gays. (Here I'm more-or-less in agreement with the conservatives' characterization of his words, but not of the policy and doctrinal position they represent. On that, see Roy Edroso, Tighten Up, Francis: Rightbloggers Reassure Us the Pope Isn't That Gay-Friendly Village Voice 08/04/2013.

It's been the Church's position for a while that it no sin to be gay but it is a sin to act gay. Francis/Bergoglio was against Argentina's marriage equality law, saying opposing it was a "war of God" against the Devil, a position he has not withdrawn. In his recent interview, he said "The problem is not to have this tendency [i.e., being gay] but to constitute a lobby. That is a very grave matter for me." ("El problema no es ser gay, sino hacer lobby" Página/12 29.07.2013; my translation from the Spanish) That was a reference in particular to the alleged "gay lobby" in the Vatican, though he seems to have meant it in the larger sense, as well.

If there's any change of the Church position in there, it's not obvious to me. But one prominent Argentine gay leader did see it as expressing an intention to dial back at least the intensity of his previous anti-gay positions. For good (?) measure, the Pope threw in that on the matter of female priests, "That door is closed." Although he did say the Church needs to deepen it "theology of women," whatever that may mean. (Mejor no hablar de sacerdotisas Página/12 29.07.2013; my translation)

Pope Francis is taking what looks like good action on cleaning up the Vatican Bank. But on gays and female priests, so far he's sticking with the same-old same-old. When Allen in his "revolution" article gets down to describing the outlines of what he sees as progressive change, it comes down to some reforms that do look hopeful: changing "the Italian monopoly on governance" in the Church, which will be progressive if he replaces conservative Italian administrators with more moderate-to-liberal ones; building up the role of the laity; increased accountability, as with the Vatican Bank; and, a diplomatic downplaying of hot-button culture war issues like abortion.

Joanna Moorhead defines the current situation in a way similar to how I see it in Friendly rhetoric from Pope Francis in Brazil. But will it translate into action? Guardian 07/30/2013:

Even as a cardinal, Bergoglio had already clamped down on priests who refused to baptise children born out of wedlock; now he has gone further and said gay people should not be marginalised ("if a person is gay and seeks God, who am I to judge him?" he asked). On the role of women, (we're only 70 percent of the church's membership, so we really shouldn't push our luck) he said having girls as altar servers and employing a handful of senior women in the Vatican might perhaps not be quite enough. On the matter of women priests, of course, there was no debate to be had.

So we're seeing a thaw, though definitely not a revolution; a subtle but significant change of direction, yet from a man who remains deeply conservative. You don't need to be radical to be seen as a wind of change in the Catholic hierarchy (what they'd have made of Christ, one shudders to think). But as Francis is no doubt all too aware, the foreign trips are the easy bits. Because the truth is that it's in the Vatican, the smallest state on Earth, that most of his problems lie. None of his difficulties have gone away while he's been on the beach in Brazil. The fact is that by signalling a change of style, the new pope has raised expectations of a change of substance.

And Nick Cohen caught a dark twist that I had not seen discussed before in Francis' now-famous comment about gays (Don't be fooled. Pope by name, pope by nature Observer 08/10/2013):

But consider the sequel. "Being gay is not the problem," the pope continued, "lobbying is the problem and this goes for any type of lobby... political lobbies, masonic lobbies, all lobbies." ("Lobby dei politici, lobby dei massoni, tante lobby.")

And with that casual phrase, the pope signalled his fealty to the deep strain of reaction in European history and hardly anyone noticed. Few Anglo-Saxon readers understand that prejudice against freemasons is the founding conspiracy theory of the far right. It saw the machinations of a society that began among harmless Scottish craftsmen in the 15th century as responsible for liberalism, the enlightenment, the rights of man... everything it hated.

In the 1790s, an abbé named Augustin Barruel, an alarming combination of Dan Brown and David Icke, looked at the American and French revolutions and concluded that the masses could have overthrown divinely ordained monarchs and the holy mother church only if they were the dupes of an international conspiracy of freemasons.

The masons were not middle-aged men in fancy dress, but the descendants of the Knights Templar, who went underground in the Middle Ages and swore to avenge themselves on the church and monarchy that had persecuted them.

It sounded mad. Indeed it was mad. But a conspiracy theory that says that human rights are a sham behind which a sinister secret society manipulates the world was too useful to waste. Successive popes issued bulls against it. Pius IX included freemasonry along with socialism, liberalism and freedom of conscience as evils the faithful must fight in his Syllabus of Errors of 1864.

The antisemites and fascists of the early 20th century added that the masons were in league with the Jews. Franco and Mussolini persecuted them. The Nazis made freemasons wear red triangles and murdered them by the thousand.

Do not think these foul ideas are dead. Radical Islam echoes the European far-right's ravings. (The Hamas charter says the freemasons are in an alliance with the Jews and – brace yourselves – the Rotary Club and the Lions as well.) Like Hamas, Luigi Negri, a Catholic bishop, believes that freemasons were responsible for the French revolution and the Russian revolution, too. Last week, the [British] Catholic Herald took its cue from the pope's condemnation of the "masonic lobby" to raise the "truly frightening thought" that masons had infiltrated the Vatican and were subverting the Holy See from within. These devils in aprons are everywhere.

A second part to Allen's "revolution underway" article is due out tomorrow.

Tags: banco vaticano, jorge mario bergoglio, pope francis i, vatican bank

"Francis is and is not Bergoglio"

The Argentine philosopher Ricardo Forster has something to say about Jorge Bergoglio/Pope Francis I that I find especially interesting (Té para tres por Ricardo Forster Página/12 29.04.2013):

Está dentro de la anomalía argentina, porque que el primer papa no europeo sea argentino es una desmesura. Creo que Bergoglio se enfrenta a ser Francisco y una situación terriblemente crítica de la Iglesia. A su vez, eso pone en discusión hacia dentro de la Argentina la relación con una Iglesia y su jerarquía que a lo largo de la historia fue tremendamente conservadora y que en los momentos más oscuros fue cómplice. Francisco es y no es Bergoglio. Porque si bien tiene detrás su biografía está en un lugar completamente distinto, que modifica incluso la subjetividad de la persona.

[He is within the Argentine anomaly, because of the fact that the first non-European Pope is an exceptional thing. I think Bergoglio is confronting being Francis and terribly critical situation for the Church. At the same time, it bring puts into discussion inside Argentina the relation with a Church and its hierarchy that throughout history was tremendously conservative and that in the darkest moments was complicit. Francis is and is not Bergoglio. Because if there is good behind his biography, he is in a completely distinct place, which modifies even the subjectivity of the person.]

I'm not familiar with Forster's style, so I'm not sure if he is being particularly circular there.

But I find the statement "Francis is and is not Bergoglio provocative in that context. On one level, it's a statement of the banal reality that having a significantly different formal role in an organization forces a person to have a new perspective and possibly to act in new ways.

But on another level, it suggests that Bergoglio's dark record in collaborating with the dictatorship of 1976-83, while avoiding the level of collusion and public defense of the regime that others in the Argentine Church hierarchy committed, could have more to do with the calculations of an ambitious and promising Church leader dominated bya reactionary, authoritarian, often explicitly anti-democratic Church hierarchy. And that his new role gives him new freedom to act in a more humane and honestly Christian way, if he really wants to.

I'm more inclined to think that the dictatorship was a more crucial test of the quality of person Bergoglio is. I'm hoping he surprises us. I'm hoping he sees his less-than-entirely-honorable role in relation to the dictatorship is something that as Pope he has to live down, to remove as a liability. And that to do so, he will push for some constructive and badly needed reforms in the Church to make the Church's business more transparent and its clergy more responsible and responsive and less exclusively male.

"Francis is and is not Bergoglio" is a good-news/bad-news message. The good news is that he has new freedom and power to do constructive things. The bad news is that he's Jorge Bergoglio.

Tags: pope francis i, jorge mario bergoglio

Argentina's Catholic Church and the dictatorship of 1976-83

Horacio Verbitsky's careful work on the role of the Catholic Church during the 1976-83 military dictatorship in Argentina became of wide interest recently with the selection of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis I. La mano izquierda de Dios, Tomo 4: La última dictadura (1976-1983) (2010) is the fourth volume of his Historia política de la Iglesia Católica (Political History of the Catholic Church), which despite the broad title focuses on the Catholic Church in Argentina.

But in La mano izquierda de Dios he also looks at the role of the Vatican, which became an important player in a network of relationships involving the Argentine dictatorship when Ronald Reagan became President. St. Reagan partnered with Pope John Paul II not only in opposing the Communist regimes in Poland and eastern Europe but also in the Central American counterinsurgency movement his Administration conducted in Central America, with El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras being particularly affected.

The cover shows Papal Nuncio in Argentina Pío Laghi (2nd from r.) with members of the junta (l. to r.) Orlando Ramón Agosti, Joreg Rafael Videla and Emilio Eduardo Massera

Bergoglio comes in for criticism in this book, though he was by no means the worst among senior officials in their collaboration with the dictatorship. There have been three main concerns about Bergoglio's role during this period that have been publicly discussed this year: his role in the arrest and torture of Jesuit priests Franz Jalics and Orlando Yorio who worked in a project in a very poor neigborhood and who Bergoglio very likely fingered for arrest, though there wasn't the slightest evidence they were involved with guerrillas or any criminal activity; his promotion of the career of Massera, pictured on the cover above; and, his membership prior to the coup in the Peronist paramilitary group Guardias de Hierro (Iron Guard) some of whose members played an important role in supporting the coup and with which Massera was closely associated.

One of Bergoglio's/Pope Francis I's more visible and attractive defenders on criticism of his role during the Argentinian dictatorship of 1976-83 is Nobel Peace Prize winner Pérez Esquivel, who himself was imprisoned by the junta for his public defense of human rights. But Horacio Verbitsky, who has been one of Bergoglio's most prominent critics on the issue, has recalled this year that in 2005, Esquivel was saying that Bergoglio had believed that people who did social work with the very poor were "comunistas, subversivos, terroristas" ("Communists, subversives, terrorists")

Esquivel said it on a national TV program when Bergoglio was being considered for Pope in the conclave of 2005. This relates in particular to the case of Jalics and Yorio, who worked in a project in a very poor neigborhood and who Bergoglio very likely fingered for arrest, though there wasn't the slightest evidence they were involved with guerrillas or any criminal activity. The video of Esquivel is on YouTube:

Verbitsky gives an account in the book of the Jalics/Yorio case, in which Bergoglio looks guilty of essentially ratting the two of them out to dictatorship for no good reason.

His account of the participation of the Vatican and its financial network in providing payments for leading members of the dictatorship - don't dictatorships always feature that, if not always with the Vatican's help - and in providing funding for the Nicaraguan contras and their terrorist campaign against the leftwing Sandinista government in Nicaragua, is also particularly interesting. The Contras' cocaine business was probably more important to its leaders than their counterrevolution. The Argentine dictatorship trained Central American death squads with the approval of the Reagan Administration. One of the main players in the financing of the Contras was construction magnate Franco Macri. His son, Maurizio Macri, is now governor of the City Buenos Aires and the leading opposition figure to Cristina Fernández' government. Verbitsky in the book compares Marurizio Macri to Italy's Silvio Berlusconi. Macri's police are currently under heavy criticism for a recent incident in which they attacked demonstrators in a manner that would have made the military dictatorship proud.

Verbitsky's chronological account shows us a picture of a Catholic hierarchy actively collaborating with a brutal dictatorship whose Catholic-national ideology required the Church's cooperation to be credible. The key human rights issues of the desaparacedos, those kidnapped, tortured and often murdered by the dictatorship, and of the babies kidnapped by the military from pregnant female political prisoners, who they kept alive until they gave birth and then routinely murdered them, the Church's record is downright shameful. On the whole, the Church hierarchy covered for the military, repeated their propaganda justifying the disappearances and torture, and mostly refused to even recognize the appeals from parents and grandparents of the missing, much less doing anything of substance to help the victims. An important part of Verbitsky's story is the Church's special ministry to the military, in which priests were frequently taking confessions from torturers, meaning that the Church was extensively informed about the ugliest aspects of the regime the hierarchy so firmly supported. Some priests and Church officials participated in the torture, telling the victims they were getting what they deserve and telling them to cooperate with the torturers.

Verbitsky contrasts this behavior with that of the Church in Chile, which took a notably more active role in addressing human rights violations by the Pinochet regime, showing a clear example than an alternative position by the Church in Argentina was entirely feasible.

As always in such situations, there were active collaborators, which included the main hierarchy and the military priests. Others, including Bergoglio, took as less public and active but nevertheless supportive and often collaborationist attitudes toward the regime. Some priests, seminarians and lay activists defended human rights and continued to work with those in need in defiance of the regime's preferences. Verbitsky relates a number of cases of them being threatened, kidnapped and murdered. The Church hierarchy was typically passive even in those cases.

But as it started to become clear that a transition to an elected, civilian government was coming closer, the Church hierarchy began to careful create alibis for themselves, making more explicit statements of concern about human rights issues while continuing their collaboration.

The Vatican did play an important and constructive role in this period in facilitating diplomatic negotiations in a territorial dispute between Argentina and Chile over the Beagle Islands, which very nearly led to war between the two dictatorships. And the Church also helped facilitate the transition to democracy in 1983. However, it's sickening to read how the Church for years echoed the regime's hate propaganda against "subversives," and then as the transition to democracy approach, started talking up the virtues of forgiveness and Christian charity to the victims of the regime's cruelty, backing the dictatorship to the end and after in their efforts to secure amnesty from any legal accountability for their crimes.

It's also striking to see spelled out the extent to which pre-modern theological ideas and explicit rejection of democracy were so deeply influential in the Church hierachy in Argentina.

Tags: argentina, jorge mario bergoglio, horacio verbitsky, pope francis i

Más sobre Bergoglio/Papa Francisco y sus vinculaciónes (o no) con la dictadura argentina procesista

"Un día histórico" TV Pública argentina 03/14/2013

Gabriel Lerner, Bergoglio, testigo en juicio a la dictadura argentina Huffpost Voces 14.03.2013 escribe:

No se lo implica en las acciones de los militares, sino que se cuestiona si tenía o no conocimiento de ellas cuando estaban sucediendo. En declaraciones a la BBC, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, activista por los derechos humanos en aquella época y Premio Nobel de la Paz, dijo que Bergoglio "no tenía vínculo con la dictadura".

"Hubo obispos que fueron cómplices pero Bergoglio no", agregó.

Pero:

La sociedad argentina estaba entonces profunda e irremediablemente dividida. La división existía también dentro de la Iglesia. Escribe Néstor Fantini, exprisionero de conciencia de Amnistía Internacional y quien estuvo preso a disposición del poder ejecutivo por cuatro años en esos días, a HuffPost Voces:

En la década de 1970, la iglesia argentina estaba profundamente dividida: los que después del histórico Concilio Ecuménico buscaban caminos que acercara a la iglesia al pueblo y, por otro lado, los que directa o solapadamente apoyaban a la dictadura militar. El Santo Padre, lamentablemente, estaba entre estos últimos.

En ese sentido, la iglesia no hablaba con una sola voz. En consecuencia y en el mejor de los casos, no hubo un esfuerzo concentrado por su parte para denunciar las desapariciones. [enfásis mio]

Nestor Fantini reporte en Las dos caras de Bergoglio Huffpost Voces 13.03.2013:

La gran novedad histórica fue que, rompiendo con la tradición, eligieron a un papa no europeo. Aún más, un papa que por primera vez proviene de los influyentes Jesuitas, la tan dinámica y controvertida orden de san Ignacio de Loyola que, en su momento, fuera expulsada de varios países del mundo. ...

Pero no todos están tan entusiasmados con la elección de Bergoglio. Algunos sectores asociados con las organizaciones de derechos humanos de Argentina recuerdan que Bergoglio no solamente es un representante de los sectores más conservadores de la iglesia, sino que también tiene un pasado bastante obscuro.

Más específicamente, se refieren a las afirmaciones de dos exsacerdotes, Orlando Yorio y Francisco Jalics, que han acusado a Bergoglio de haber colaborado con la dictadura militar argentina de la década de 1970.

Estas acusaciones son recogidas por Emilio Mignone, en su libro Iglesia y dictadura. Allí, el respetado dirigente de una de las organizaciones de derechos humanos más importantes de Argentina, utiliza como ejemplo a Bergoglio para resaltar la complicidad de ciertos prelados con los militares argentinos quienes, durante esos años, secuestraron y asesinaron a aproximadamente 30,000 ciudadanos, incluyendo a sacerdotes que consideraban subversivos.

¡Ojalá que el Papa nuevo lo hice!

Fantini concluye: "Mientras tanto, queda una seria duda sobre nuestro nuevo Papa y su pasado en épocas de secuestros, torturas y desapariciones."

Tags: jorge mario bergoglio, pope francis i

The Argentine Pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis I

My enthusiasm for the new Pope Francis I/Jorge Mario Bergoglio is cautious to the point of being more worry than hope. We can always hope. There was even the possibility that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI would have some reform-oriented moments. Now we can mainly be relieved that he didn't do more harm.

I don't see a lot in Bergoglio's record to make me hope that he's likely to be especially reform minded. During El Proceso, the military dictatorship of 1976-83 in Argentina, he wasn't exactly Sophie Scholl. John Allen, Jr., in his article (retitled since its first publication) Profile: New pope, Jesuit Bergoglio, was runner-up in 2005 conclave National Catholic Reporter 03/08/2013, writes of his role during that period:

From 1973 to 1979 he served as the Jesuit provincial in Argentina, then in 1980 became the rector of the seminary from which he had graduated.

These were the years of the military junta in Argentina, when many priests, including leading Jesuits, were gravitating towards the progressive liberation theology movement. As the Jesuit provincial, Bergoglio insisted on a more traditional reading of Ignatian spirituality, mandating that Jesuits continue to staff parishes and act as chaplains rather than moving into "base communities" and political activism.

Although Jesuits generally are discouraged from receiving ecclesiastical honors and advancement, especially outside mission countries, Bergoglio was named auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires in 1992 and then succeeded the ailing Cardinal Antonio Quarracino in 1998. John Paul II made Bergoglio a cardinal in 2001, assigning him the Roman church named after the legendary Jesuit St. Robert Bellarmino.

Over the years, Bergoglio became close to the Comunione e Liberazione movement founded by Italian Fr. Luigi Giussani, sometimes speaking at its massive annual gathering in Rimini, Italy. He's also presented Giussani's books at literary fairs in Argentina. This occasionally generated consternation within the Jesuits, since the ciellini [members of Comunione e Liberazione] once upon a time were seen as the main opposition to Bergoglio's fellow Jesuit in Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini.

Allen puts a relatively friendly spin on Begoglio's fondness for the conservative Comunione e Liberazione group, saying, "that's also part of Bergoglio's appeal, someone who personally straddles the divide between the Jesuits and the ciellini, and more broadly, between liberals and conservatives in the church."

Charlie Pierce gives a less appreciative view of the ciellini in Meet Your New Pope 03/13/2013:

He [Bergoglio] also has ties to the shadowy network of international conservative Catholic organizations that John Paul II enabled and encouraged throughout his long reign. In Bergoglio's case, it's the Comunione e Liberazione movement in Italy, a group based in the conservatibe backlash against the Second Vatican Council that has been conspicuously involved in Italian politics. (Its newspaper, Il Sabato, came very close to calling for outright Catholic theocracy in Italy.) Sylvio Berlusconi is also quite a fan.

So, at first glance, we have a deft clerical politician with a long track record of managing to straddle controversial issues while leaning always toward the powers in Rome.

Hugh O'Shaughnessy in The sins of the Argentinian church Guardian 04.01.2013 gave a very harsh verdict on Begoglio's dealings with the junta. But the significant correction now appended to the end of the article indicates that he wasn't writing with the greatest of circumspection.

Washington Uranga, Un estratega político Página 12 14.03.2013 writes:

Bergoglio, jesuita, es un hombre de sólida formación teológica y cultural, y desde el punto de vista político ha tenido fuertes vinculaciones con los sectores más tradicionales y ortodoxos del peronismo. Se lo puede considerar claramente como un religioso de pensamiento conservador en todos los aspectos y sentidos, pero no por ello cerrado al debate y a la discusión de las ideas.

La etapa más cuestionada y controvertida de su vida tiene que ver con su actuación como superior provincial de la Compañía de Jesús durante la dictadura militar. Se lo ha señalado como directo responsable de la desaparición de los sacerdotes también jesuitas Francisco Jalics y Orlando Yorio. Ambos curas, que desarrollaban trabajo social en las villas de Buenos Aires, fueron secuestrados y llevados a la ESMA. De allí fueron devueltos después de padecer torturas. Bergoglio niega toda responsabilidad en la desaparición de los curas. Orlando Yorio, que ya murió, estaba convencido de que su superior los había entregado. El episodio nunca fue aclarado en forma suficiente.

[Bergoglio, Jesuit, is a man of solid theological and cultural formation, and from the political point of view has had strong connections with the most traditional and orthodox sectors of Peronism. He can clearly be considered as a religious person of conservative thought in all aspects and senses, but not closed to debate and discussion of ideas because of that.

The most questioned and controversial stage of his life has to do with his actions a provincial superios of the Society of Jesus {the Jesuit order} during the military dictatorship. He has been indicated as directly responsible for the disappearance of the fellow Jesuit priests Francisco Jalics y Orlando Yorio. Both clerics, who did social work in the poor neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, were kidnapped and carried to the ESMA {a notorious torture center during the dictatorship}. They were released from there after suffering torture. Bergoglio completely denies responsibility in the disappearance of the clerics. Orland Yario, who has died, was convinced that his superior had turned them in. The episode has never been clarified in a sufficient form.]

The Jalics-Yorio case is the most serious criticism of him I've seen so far in connection with El Proceso. The nasty conservative writer Erick Erickson praised Bergoglio for "handing over lefties to the right wing junta," which shows how twisted Erickson is. (Digby, Liberty loving wingnut "adores" the new pope because lefties object to his ties to death squads Hullabaloo 03/13/2013)

Argentine human rights organizations still working on various issues related to the dictatorship like the Madres del Plaza de Mayo, HIJOS (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio) and Familiares de Detenidos y Desaparecidos por Razones Políticas don't regard Bergoglio as having been especially helpful in resolving issues of the disappeared and of babies kidnapped from political prisoners, one of the most painful of those issues. ("Retroceso para nuestra lucha" Página 12 14.03.2013) At the very least, the new Pope should address the failures of the Argentine Church during that period.

This photoshopped graphic from HIJOS depicts Bergoglio being escorted by notorious criminal leaders of the 1976-83 junta:

See also: Las oscuras relaciones del nuevo Papa con la dictadura argentina Público 13.03.2013; Fernando Cibeira, Errar es divino Página 12 14.03.2013; Horacio Verbitsky, Un ersatz Página 12 14.03.2013.

Despite his diplomatic skills during the dictatorship and his good ongoing relationships with the Argentine oligarchy and their representatives in politics, allies of the reformist Kirchner governments, including the current President Cristina Fernández, have been much cooler. He has especially blasted Cristina's government over what in America are known as "culture war" issues like abortion and marriage equality for gays and lesbians. Bergoglio has been a hardline, outspoken opponent of both. Same-sex marriage is legal in Argentina, abortion much restricted.

Allen in the article cited above observes that Bergoglio had good relationships with the large Jewish community in Argentina:

Bergoglio also won high marks for his compassionate response to the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires of a seven-story building housing the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association and the Delegation of the Argentine Jewish Association. It was one of the worst anti-Jewish attacks ever in Latin America, and in 2005 Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, praised Bergoglio's leadership.

Lauren Markoe in Jews worldwide see an ally in Pope Francis Religion News Service 03/13/2013 also reports:

"As far as I have heard and read in the few minutes since he was elected pope, he has shown deep signs of respect and friendship towards the Jews," said Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome. "It's a good starting point."

As Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis "has had a warm relationship with the Jewish community of Argentina, and enjoyed close friendships with many prominent rabbis," said Rabbi David Rosen, international director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee.

The Jewish community of Argentina — 250,000 people living predominantly in Buenos Aires — is the largest in Latin America by far.

Bergoglio's statements after the Buenos Aires bombing still resonate 20 years later with Jews in Argentina and beyond, in part because the crime remains under what many consider a purposefully thwarted investigation, and continues to make headlines in Argentina, Israel and the Jewish press.

When Islamic militants — widely thought to be from Iranian-backed Hezbollah — attacked the Jewish center, Bergoglio "was forthright not only in his condemnation of the act but in his solidarity with the Jewish community," said Rosen.

Just two months ago, the government of Argentina announced a joint Argentinian-Iranian commission to investigate the nearly 20-year-old suicide bombing, which killed 85 and wounded 300.

Rosen said he is unaware of any statement Bergoglio made regarding the new commission, which strikes many Jews as allowing the criminals to investigate the crime. [my emphasis]

Couldn't Religion News Service spring for a long-distance phone call to Buenos Aires and maybe, you know, talk to someone at the AMIA or some other Jewish civic or religious organization there to ask about how Argentine Jews got along with the new Pope in his previous career? Because that account of the state of the AMIA investigation is not very substantial. It was a real step forward in the investigation of the case when the Argentine government recently struck an agreement with Iran that allows Argentine investigators to interview several Iranian suspects in the case. Although the agreement did cause some controversy in Argentina, calling it "allowing the criminals to investigate the crime" is a big overstatements.

The Argentine government has been pursuing the investigation into this 19-year-old case, including bringing charges against former government officials including ex-President Carlos Menem for obstruction of justice in the case. (In America, of course, we Look Forward Not Backward and consider it a sign of "Third World" backwardness to actually hold senior government officials legally accountable for breaking the law in their positions of public trust.) Their theory of the case is based on Iranian perpetrators. But that has never began demonstrated in court. And the evidence is more ambiguous than one would assume from the typical American references to the attack which asset as fact or its functional equivalent that Hizbullah did the attack with Iranian backing. Since that attack is used as the best example of Iran's supposed ability to practice Terrorism far outside its borders as one among many ways of justifying a war buildup against Iran, it's worth examining such claims with care.

During Trita Parsi's book tour last year promoting his A Single Roll of the Dice - Obama's Diplomacy with Iran (2012), I asked him about the AMIA case and whether he thought it was credible that Iran could have directed such an attack. He said he wasn't familiar enough with the AMIA case to have a strong opinion on it. But that such a move was consistent with other things Iran was doing in the world at the time.

It's worth noting that La Nación, the newspaper that has been long regarded as the chief press organ of the Argentine oligarchy, is downright gleeful that we have a Pope who they regard as a friend and as an enemy of Cristina's. (Mariano Obarrio, Horas de sorpresa, fastidio y decepción en la Casa Rosada La Nación 14.03.2013; Jorge Bergoglio y los Kirchner: años de una relación tensa La Nación 14.03.2013)

Tags: jorge mario bergoglio, pope francis i