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Pope Francis
Some thoughts:
- an old man his turn is unlikely to be long
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from Latin America, giving that huge part of the church a bigger voice
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a conservative, which is within the catholic church rather middle of the road, but with a social mind
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strongly against liberal hype stuff like homosexual marriage
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the name he chose has real meaning for catholic folks and can be understood as a promise of a less pompous church
Altogether a relative good choice in my view though not the tall black African woman I would have liked. Maybe next time?
Democracy Now! interviewed Verbitsky yesterday.
HORACIO VERBITSKY: …. [Borgoglio] was accused by two Jesuit priests of having surrendered them to the military. They were a group of Jesuits that were under Bergoglio’s direction. He was the provincial superior of the order in Argentina, being very, very young. He was the younger [sic: youngest?] provincial Jesuit in history; at 36 years, he was provincial. During a period of great political activity in the Jesuits’ company, he stimulated the social work of the Jesuits. But when the military coup overthrow the Isabel Perón government, he was in touch with the military that ousted this government and asked the Jesuits to stop their social work. And when they refused to do it, he stopped protecting them, and he let the military know that they were not more inside the protection of the Jesuits’ company, and they were kidnapped. And they accuse him for this deed. He denies this. He said to me that he tried to get them free, that he talked with the former dictator, Videla, and with former dictator Massera to have them freed.
And during a long period, I heard two versions: the version of the two kidnapped priests that were released after six months of torture and captivity, and the version of Bergoglio. This was an issue divisive in the human rights movement to which I belong, because the president founding of CELS, Center for Legal and Social Studies, Emilio Mignone, said that Bergoglio was a accomplice of the military, and a lawyer of the CELS, Alicia Oliveira, that was a friend of Bergoglio, tell the other part of the story, that Bergoglio helped them. This was the two—the two versions.
But during the research for one of my books, I found documents in the archive of the foreign relations minister in Argentina, which, from my understanding, gave an end to the debate and show the double standard that Bergoglio used. The first document is a note in which Bergoglio asked the ministry to—the renewal of the passport of one of these two Jesuits that, after his releasing, was living in Germany, asking that the passport was renewed without necessity of this priest coming back to Argentina. The second document is a note from the officer that received the petition recommending to his superior, the minister, the refusal of the renewal of the passport. And the third document is a note from the same officer telling that these priests have links with subversion—that was the name that the military gave to all the people involved in opposition to the government, political or armed opposition to the military—and that he was jailed in the mechanics school of the navy, and saying that this information was provided to the officer by Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio, provincial superior of the Jesuit company. This means, to my understanding, a double standard. He asked the passport given to the priest in a formal note with his signature, but under the table he said the opposite and repeated the accusations that produced the kidnapping of these priests.
AMY GOODMAN: And these priests—can you explain, Horacio, what happened to these two priests, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: Yes. Orlando, after his releasing, went to Rome.
AMY GOODMAN: How were they found?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: Sorry?
AMY GOODMAN: How were they found? In what condition were they? What had happened to them?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: Well, he was released—both of them were released, drugged, confused, transported by helicopter to—in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, were abandoned, asleep by drugs, in very bad condition. They were tortured. They were interrogated. One of the interrogators had externally knowings about theological questions, that induced one of them, Orlando Yorio, to think that their own provincial, Bergoglio, had been involved in this interrogatory.
AMY GOODMAN: He said that—he said that Bergoglio himself had been part of the—his own interrogation, this Jesuit priest?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: He told me that he had the impression their own provincial, Bergoglio, was present during the interrogatory, which one of the interrogators had externally knowledge of theological questions. And when released, he went to Rome. He lived seven years in Rome, then come back to Argentina. And when coming back to Argentina, he was incardinated in the Quilmes diocesis in Great Buenos Aires, where the bishop was one of the leaders of the progressive branch of the Argentine church opposite to that of Bergoglio. And Orlando Yorio denounced Bergoglio. I received his testimony when Bergoglio was elected to the archbishop of Buenos Aires. And Bergoglio—I interviewed Bergoglio also, and he denied the charges, and he told me that he had defended them.
And Orlando Yorio got me in touch with Francisco Jalics, that was living in Germany. I talked with him, and he confirmed the story, but he didn’t want to be mentioned in my piece, because he told me that he preferred to not remember this sad part of his life and to pardon. And he was for oblivion and pardon. That he was, during a lot of years, very resented against Bergoglio, but that he had decided to forgot and forget. And when I released the book with the story, one Argentine journalist working for a national agency, [inaudible], who has been a disciple of Jalics, talked with him and asked him for the story. And Jalics told him that he would not affirm, not deny the story.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Horacio—Horacio Verbitsky, I’d like to ask you about another priest who was involved in the dirty wars, Christian von Wernich, who was a former chaplain of the police department in Argentina and also later was convicted of being involved—
HORACIO VERBITSKY: He was convicted—he was convicted, and he’s in jail, in a common jail, but the Argentine church, during the tenure of Bergoglio, hasn’t punished him, in canonical terms. He was convicted by the human justice, but by the church standards, he’s always a priest. And this tells something about Bergoglio and the Argentine church also. (My emphasis throughout)
Most of the hour was about Pope Francis, but this segment concentrated on what Verbitsky knew about the two kidnapped priests.
Audio, video, and transcript at the link.
It seems to me this part of his history will come down to a he said/they said, with just enough ambiguity to give the new pope cover…plausible deniability. Just now heard BBC report on this incident (very, very brief) which closed with Vatican denying any role for Borgoglio in the kidnapping and that he tried to help free the two priests. This will be going down the memory hole, I predict.
Posted by: jawbone | Mar 15 2013 14:05 utc | 53
Horacio Verbitsky seems legit.
b. no I do not expect a pope complicit in crimes.
One of the priests Pope Francis is supposed to have delivered to the Junta says they have reconciled and the matter for him is closed.
Both concerned priests seem to have accused Pope Francis to Jesuit head Pedro Arrupe of handing them in.
This here is Der Spiegel on the issue.
The two liberation theologists were kidnapped on May 23, 1976 in a slum where they were doing ministry and social work. “Many people politically associated with the extreme right viewed our presence in the poor districts with suspicion,” recalled Jalics later in his writings. “They interprested the fact that we lived there as support of the guerrillas, and they denounced us as terrorists.”
The regime’s henchmen brought the two Jesuits to the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), a detention center notorious for torture. After five months they were thrown out onto a field half-naked and pumped full of drugs. The priests complained of Bergoglio to Superior General Pedro Arrupe in Rome. But they had already been expelled from the Jesuit order, allegedly due to contact with woman and “conflicts of obedience.”
Accusations of Complicity in Kidnapping
Argentine human rights lawyer Marcelo Parrilli brought Bergoglio’s case to the authorities, accusing him of implication in the kidnapping. That was in April 2005, shortly before the conclave that eventually chose Joseph Ratzinger to become Pope Benedict XVI. Bergoglio reportedly got the second most votes, but stepped aside in deference to Ratzinger.
A Jesuit spokesman called Parrilli’s legal complaint slander. Bergoglio twice used his right to refuse to give evidence in court. When he testified in 2010, his comments were “evasive,” according to human rights lawyer Myriam Bregman. In 2012, Argentine bishops collectively apologized for the mistakes of the church in the country’s “Dirty War” in the 1970s and early 80s — more than 30 years after the fact.
After their detainment, Yorio and Jalics were offered reinstatement into the Jesuit order. Jalics accepted, but Yorio did not.
Yorio never fully recovered from the traumatic experiences in prison. He died in 2000 in Uruguay. Franz Jalics survived the difficult times of torture with the help of meditation and constant prayer. He traveled to Germany in 1978, and later wrote a book about spiritual retreats. He declined to comment on the matter. “But he’s at peace with Bergoglio,” said Jesuit spokesman Thomas Busch. “A few years ago, Father Jalics traveled to Buenos Aires on the invitation of the archbishop, and they talked together.” Nothing is known of their conversation.
A book Jalics wrote in 1995 tells a different story. He says prior to the kidnapping, he described his precarious situation to a superior, warning “that he’s toying with our lives.” He says the “man” promised to explain to the military that they weren’t terrorists. However dozens of documents and statements of witnesses purportedly show that instead of defending the two priests, the same “man” only futher incriminated them. Yorio had related a similar story at the end of the 1970s. At the time, the “man” had a name: Bergoglio.
and further down on the two faces of Pope Francis:
Argentine investigative journalist Horacio Verbitsky, nickname “the dog,” has written numerous essays and books about the important relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the military dictatorship. He published an interview with Yorio’s siblings Graciela and Rodolfo in 2010.
According to that interview, Bergoglio said in a personal conversation that he relied completely on the military secret service to find a clarification of the problem and that they would be responsible for conducting interrogations of the prisoners. Bergoglio was said to have important ties to the authorities. He allegedly met with Admiral Emilio Massera, one of the leaders of the military junta. Bergoglio said he did so to advocate on behalf of the two Jesuit brothers. He said he had nothing to hide.
“I know people he helped,” said Yorio’s brother Rodolfo. “That’s exactly what reveals his two faces, and his closeness to the military powers. He was a master at ambiguity.” And he levels a bitter accusation: “When the army killed someone, (Bergoglio) was rid of him, when they saved someone, it was he who had saved them.” That’s why there are people who see him as a saint, Rodolfo said. “And why there are others who fear him.”
This here is a description of reactions in Argentinia. The very political question remains why the Vativan decided to walk into this. Pope Francis was not the only one they could have chosen.
Myriam Bregman, an Argentine lawyer in the continuing trials of crimes at the ESMA death camp, says Bergoglio’s appointment to the papacy left her confused. “It gave me a feeling of amazement and impotence,” said Bregman, who took Bergoglio’s declaration regarding Jalics and Yorio in 2010.
“Bergoglio refused to come [and] testify in court,” she recalled, making use of Argentine legislation that permits ministers of the church to choose where to declare.
“He finally accepted to see us in an office alongside Buenos Aires cathedral sitting underneath a tapestry of the Virgin Mary. It was an intimidating experience, we were very uncomfortable intruding in a religious building.”
Bregman says that Bergoglio did not provide any significant information on the two priests. “He seemed reticent, I left with a bitter taste,” she said.
Estela de la Cuadra’s mother co-founded the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo activist group during the dictatorship to search for missing family members. She was at first astonished, then appalled when a friend texted the news that Bergoglio had been chosen as the new pope.
“It is unthinkable, horrifying given what I know about his history,” she said, recalling the disappearance of her sister.
The last time they saw each other was in January 1977 when they were members of leftwing groups formed among the students at La Plata University, then one of the most radical in Argentina.
Her sister, Elena, was three months pregnant and in hiding in Buenos Aires from military snatch squads that had already seized her husband. She “disappeared” a month later and was later seen by survivors in a concentration camp run by the navy.
Desperate, the family used a connection with the global head of the Jesuit order – the “black pope”, Pedro Arrupe – to lobby for her release. He put them on to Bergoglio, who provided a letter of introduction to a bishop with connections to the military dictator.
The only answer that came back, said Estela, was that her sister’s baby was now “in the hands of a good family. It was irreversible.” Neither mother nor child were heard from again.
For Estela, Bergoglio did the bare minimum he had to do to keep in line with the black pope. She says the story underlines the close connections between the Catholic church and the military junta, as well as what she sees as lies and hypocrisy of a new pope who once claimed to have no knowledge of the adoptions of babies being born in concentration camps and then adopted by families close to the regime.
“I’ve testified in court that Bergoglio knew everything, that he wasn’t – despite what he says – uninvolved,” said Estela, who believes the church worked with the military to gather intelligence on the families of the missing.
She is also furious that Bergoglio refused to defrock another priest, Christian von Wernich, who was jailed for life in 2007 for seven killings, 42 abductions and 34 cases of torture, in which he told victims: “God wants to know where your friends are.”
She is now requesting classified documents from the episcopal and Vatican archives, which would shed more light on the issues.
That is unlikely to be approved in Rome, though it would – until Wednesday at least – have probably gone down well in the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
The Argentine president is a staunch advocate of taking to court not only military officers responsible for the killing of thousands of young activists, but also civilians who may have played a role back then.
Fernández has an icy relationship with Bergoglio – who is seen as a conservative – and has studiously avoided him over the last years, moving out of the city every 25 May when Bergoglio gave his annual mass at Buenos Aires Cathedral.
more will come out. The Catholic church now has another scandal at hands.
Posted by: somebody | Mar 15 2013 14:24 utc | 54
58 b. the assault comes from Argentinia and is easily explained by Argentinian politics. Pope Francis is “looking after the poor” with a right wing agenda, in direct competition with the left agenda of “looking after the poor” and left wing trade unions. His election is a boost to right wing Argentinian Peronist parties and it is difficult for Kirchner to ignore what he says when he is pope.
It is obvious that he is very much into politics indeed.
57 Mr. Pragma – how likely is your theory when the people you describe as involved are the ones who decide on the pope.
And above all, how likely is it that he is an outsider when he is connected to “communion and liberation”.
But what most piqued my interest about Pope Francis is his strong tie to a movement called Comunione e Liberazione, or Communion and Liberation (CL).
As John Allen reported in the days before Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Francis, the Argentine cardinal “became close to the Comunione e Liberazione movement” over the years, “sometimes speaking at its massive annual gathering in Rimini, Italy.” Allen also notes Bergoglio presented the books of CL’s founder, Fr. Luigi Giussani, at literary fairs in Argentina. (It should be noted that Cardinal Angelo Scola, widely considered the conclave’s front-runner, is also a longtime CL collaborator.)
Giussani started CL in 1969 in response to a period of rapid social and cultural change in Italy. The movement blossomed among high school and university students, especially since its main instrument of evangelization came in weekly catechetical sessions. These gatherings, called Scuola di comunità (School of Community), are considered the heart of the group to this day.
Its popularity has spread globally in the last 15 years. Although it now claims to be present in 80 countries, its presence in the United States is not as apparent as other groups like Opus Dei or the Legionaries of Christ. Its lack of visibility is ironic, since when compared to these two organizations, CL is far less secretive and its membership is far more open and flexible.
But CL has not been immune to intrigue, especially in commentaries among Italian journalists. In his 2011 book La Lobby di Dio (God’s Lobby), Ferruccio Pinotti argues CL is “more powerful than Opus Dei, more well-oiled than freemasonry, and more ‘plugged in’ than Confindustria, Italy’s manufacturer’s association.” La Repubblica’s editor, Eugenio Scalfari, has been quoted as saying, “Not even the Mafia has so much power. In hospitals, healthcare, universities …”
Members of CL are known as ciellini, and Bergoglio’s relationship with them was another cause for consternation among his Jesuit brothers since, as John Allen noted, “the ciellini once upon a time were seen as the main opposition to Bergoglio’s fellow Jesuit in Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini.”
It was Martini who, before his death last year, gave a highly publicized last interview saying the Catholic church is “200 years out of date.”
Much of what I have learned about CL, other than from the organization’s website, comes from the essay “Comunione e Liberazione: A Fundamentalist Idea of Power,” written by theologian and political scientist Dario Zadra. The article appears in the volume Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements (University of Chicago Press, 2004), edited by Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby.
The book was one of several volumes that came out of the work of The Fundamentalism Project, a program that offered a scholarly investigation into global conservative religious movements. Marty, who is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and Appleby, who directs of Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, co-directed this project.
In his article on CL, Zadra explains that the movement’s worldview stems from two main ideas: “That Christ is the saving event in human history, and that religious authority is a fundamental element of the human condition.” He continues: “Members place religion at the center of a new worldview and in their evangelistic efforts at transforming the relationship between modern society and religion.”
Much like evangelical Protestantism, CL understands the central, saving event of one’s life begins with a graced encounter with Christ. But unlike the Protestants, CL understands the saving agent to be the Roman Catholic church. Zadra explains: “In CL the authoritative character of the event of salvation is directly translated into the authority of the Church. … The central event in life is a saving encounter with the communion embodied in the Church.”
The church’s “authority,” Zadra explains, is best expressed by the pope. CL’s insistence on “total fidelity and communion with the Succession of Peter” (a direct quote from Benedict XVI himself) has made the movement particularly popular among members of the hierarchy.
Obedience to the authority of the church seems as crucial to Pope Francis as it did to his predecessor and as it does to CL. In a 2005 profile of Cardinal Bergoglio, Jose Maria Poirier, editor of the Argentinean Catholic magazine Criterio, wrote, “He exercised his authority as provincial with an iron fist, calmly demanding strict obedience and clamping down on critical voices. Many Jesuits complained that he considered himself the sole interpreter of St Ignatius of Loyola, and to this day speak of him warily.”
After spending a good part of his research interviewing leaders in CL and its young members, Zadra realized that, though the organization had broad appeal, it was different from typical traditionalist movements:
Its beliefs and practices offer a new religious and countercultural way of looking at modern society and culture. CL boldly claims that the Church embodies authoritative truth that is binding on society at large. By claiming the presence of Christ, the Church also claims divine authority — a kind of inerrancy, not of the biblical text (as in Protestant fundamentalism) but of the Church.
This belief in the inerrancy of the church influences CL’s understanding of human conscience. “The conscience of the individual is shaped by and beholden to the Church,” Zadra writes, “and the Church ought to be considered the living and legitimate paradigm of society.”
Although CL members are comfortable in the modern, technological and political world, they reject the modern insistence on “a freedom of conscience that excludes the religious attitude at its very root.” Zadra explains that those who center their political and cultural ideas on human values rather than the living presence of Jesus Christ are considered “enemies of CL.”
Zadra concludes that “the political rhetoric and vision of the movement seem to continue a long-standing political position in the Catholic world — that of returning the Roman Catholic Church to its traditional role of political power.”
My purpose in exploring CL is not to demonize the movement or the new pope, but rather to piece together a fuller picture of Francis by exploring in a little more depth an organization with which he has an enduring relationship. Those who hope Francis’ humility indicates he may decentralize Rome’s authority or relax the demand for absolute orthodoxy to the pope may want to read more about CL’s understanding of the papacy.
Those who believe that Francis’ criticisms of his fellow bishops indicates he may embrace those who are critical of some of the church’s positions should be aware of CL’s belief that the individual conscience is beholden to the church.
Those who are convinced that Francis’ zeal for the poor and marginalized will lead him to engage the secular world without the broader agenda of “evangelizing” it ought to learn more about CL’s belief that the church’s authoritative truth is binding on all of society.
On this last point, Pope Francis actually tipped his hand in his brief opening statement on the evening of his election. Just before he asked the people to pray for him, the new pope said, “My hope is that this journey of the church that we begin today, together with help of my cardinal vicar [of Rome], be fruitful for the evangelization of this beautiful city.”
Whether Pope Francis will have better luck than his predecessor in evangelizing Europe remains questionable, especially given the church’s track record in his native land. Although Cardinal Bergoglio encouraged his flock to join political campaigns against same-sex marriage, Argentina became the first Latin American country to pass marriage equality in 2010. And as The Associated Press reported Wednesday evening, while Argentina’s 33 million Catholics account for more than two-thirds of the country’s population, fewer than 10 percent attend Mass regularly.
CL’s organization and ideology may be mighty in Italy, but time will tell whether it can achieve global influence — and what role Pope Francis might play in wielding it.
[Jamie L. Manson received her Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School, where she studied Catholic theology and sexual ethics. Her NCR columns have won numerous awards, most recently second prize for Commentary of the Year from Religion Newswriters (RNA).]
Frankly, this sounds like Pope Francis is the response of the Catholic church to political Islam.
Posted by: somebody | Mar 16 2013 10:34 utc | 59
Jorge Mario Bergoglio: The “Dirty War” Pope
http://www.globalresearch.ca/jorge-mario-bergoglio-the-dirty-war-pope/5327022
“…During the first trial of leaders of the military junta in 1985, Yorio declared,
“I am sure that he himself gave over the list with our names to the Navy.”
The two were taken to the notorious Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA) torture center and held for over five months before being drugged and dumped in a town outside the city.
Bergoglio was ideologically predisposed to backing the mass political killings unleashed by the junta. In the early 1970s, he was associated with the right-wing Peronist Guardia de Hierro (Iron Guard), whose cadre—together with elements of the Peronist trade union bureaucracy—were employed in the death squads known as the Triple A (Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance), which carried out a campaign of extermination against left-wing opponents of the military before the junta even took power. Adm. Emilio Massera, the chief of the Navy and the leading ideologue of the junta, also employed these elements, particularly in the disposal of the personal property of the “disappeared.”
Yorio, who died in 2000, charged that Bergoglio “had communications with Admiral Massera, and had informed him that I was the chief of the guerrillas.”
The junta viewed the most minimal expression of opposition to the existing social order or sympathy for the oppressed as “terrorism.” The other priest who was abducted, Francisco Jalics, recounted in a book that Bergoglio had promised them he would tell the military that they were not terrorists. He wrote, “From subsequent statements by an official and 30 documents that I was able to access later, we were able to prove, without any room for doubt, that this man did not keep his promise, but that, on the contrary, he presented a false denunciation to the military.”
Bergoglio declined to appear at the first trial of the junta as well as at subsequent proceedings to which he was summoned. In 2010, when he finally did submit to questioning, lawyers for the victims found him to be “evasive” and “lying.”
Bergoglio claimed that he learned only after the end of the dictatorship of the junta’s practice of stealing the babies of disappeared mothers, who were abducted, held until giving birth and then executed, with their children given to military or police families. This lie was exposed by people who had gone to him for help in finding missing relatives.
The collaboration with the junta was not a mere personal failing of Bergoglio, but rather the policy of the Church hierarchy, which backed the military’s aims and methods. The Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky exposed Bergoglio’s attempted cover-up for this systemic complicity in a book that Bergoglio authored, which edited out compromising sentences from a memorandum recording a meeting between the Church leadership and the junta in November 1976, eight months after the military coup.
The excised statement included the pledge that the Church “in no way intends to take a critical position toward the action of the government,” as its “failure would lead, with great probability, to Marxism.” It declared the Catholic Church’s “understanding, adherence and acceptance” in relation to the so-called “Proceso” that unleashed a reign of terror against Argentine working people.
This support was by no means platonic. The junta’s detention and torture centers were assigned priests, whose job it was, not to minister to those suffering torture and death, but to help the torturers and killers overcome any pangs of conscience. Using such biblical parables as “separating the wheat from the chafe,” they assured those operating the so-called “death flights,” in which political prisoners were drugged, stripped naked, bundled onto airplanes and thrown into the sea, that they were doing “God’s work.” Others participated in the torture sessions and tried to use the rite of confession to extract information of use to the torturers.
This collaboration was supported from the Vatican on down. In 1981, on the eve of Argentina’s war with Britain over the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands, Pope John Paul II flew to Buenos Aires, appearing with the junta and kissing its then-chief, Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, while saying not a word about the tens of thousands who had been kidnapped, tortured and murdered.
As Jefferson noted, the Church is “always in alliance with the despot,” as it was in backing Franco’s fascists in Spain, its collaboration with the Nazis as they carried out the Holocaust in Europe, and its support of the US war in Vietnam.
Nonetheless, the naming of a figure like Bergoglio as pope—and its celebration within the media and ruling circles—must serve as a stark warning. Not only are the horrific crimes carried out in Argentina 30 years ago embraced, those in power are contemplating the use of similar methods once again to defend capitalism from intensifying class struggle and the threat of social revolution.”
Posted by: вот так | Mar 17 2013 0:30 utc | 67
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