Those of us who know that Pope Francis, while he was the most influential Jesuit leader in Argentina, maintained a cooperative silence, even as millions of people throughout the world were aghast at the horrific news that thousands of Argentinians were being murdered or ‘disappeared’ during the brutal US supported dictatorship of General Videla, see the Pope’s present outspokenness about anti-establishment presidential candidate Donald Trump as consistent with the Papacy having always been a tool of the business interests of the colonial, now neocolonial, capitalist elite in Europe and the United States.
Was the Pope’s intervention in the US electoral process of phony democratic appearances spontaneous, or was the Pope wheeled out as a big gun in the corporate establishment’s ongoing media discrediting of upstart maverick candidate Trump? Are Trump and Socialist Senator Sanders really temporary thorns in the side of the elite of our world destroying thieving US led speculative banking industry, or merely a well managed sideshow intended only to portray the election of the next posterboy puppet presidential spokesperson for Wall Street insanity as having been more than just the usual choice between two politicians obedient to the military-industrial-finanical complex? Which ever the case, let us at least learn about Trump’s world celebrity Italian detractor, Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
Pope’s every movement and words constantly blown up in large proportion and importance makes for a media inculcated impression that God’s representative on planet Earth is blessing America while its investors in the profitable use of US Armed Forces go on destroying nations and peoples in the formerly outright colonially occupied and plundered nations, most of which were originally wealthier and more highly cultured and scientifically advanced than their savage European conquerors.
Media holding up high this Catholic Pope as a paragon of virtue with God-like authority and a reputation purer than snow, has to serve well as a form of rehabilitation of the Papacy itself for the quite substantial amount of people who know of the horrific role of the church during the early centuries of European genocidal subjugation, plunder, enslavement and destruction of cultures and civilizations under the pretense of saving souls in the name of the God of the Christians, a role Popes have continued to play during the recolonializtion or neocolonization of world led by an elite of speculating investors on Wall Street.
The career of Jorge Bergoglio, who has been paraded all week before the TV viewing world audience as an angelic Pope Francis, an awesome figure, often as not in the usual regal headdress Popes wore during the Dark Ages of European history, contains nothing outright criminal like the careers of the Popes of the Inquisition, however his career does reflect a proclivity not to interfere while the exploited poor are murderously persecuted by the world’s white establishment. Your Archival Research Peoples Historian did a quick Internet search: ‘Pope and Videla,’ and chose for his readers from the first thirty entries that popped up. (General Jorge Rafael Videla was President and dictator of Argentina during the so called ‘Dirty War’ that took place from roughly 1974 to 1983, though it should well be dated from 1969, when military and security forces and right-wing death squads in the form of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance.) Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, held the top leadership position in the powerful Society of Jesus in Argentina from 1973 to 1979.)
The Truth Behind Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis , 3/16/2013, Global Research
Photo: Pope Francis with Leader of military junta General Jorge Videla.
[http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-truth-behind-pope-francis-breaking-the-silence-the-catholic-church-in-argentina-and-the-dirty-war/5327049]
“Argentina between 1976 and 1983 was wracked by a “dirty war” in which successive military regimes hunted down, tortured and “disappeared” tens of thousands of citizens.
The dictatorship that followed consigned thousands of Argentineans into military detention. Most were tortured; a few were released, many were eventually murdered. These “disappeared” numbered in all around 30,000.”
Jorge Rafael Videla Dead: Did Pope Francis Sit Idly By During Argentine’s ‘Dirty War’? By Ana Maria Defillo, MIC
Sep 17, 2015 –
[http://mic.com/articles/42815/jorge-rafael-videla-dead-did-pope-francis-sit-idly-by-during-argentine-s-dirty-war]
“Former Argentine military dictator Jorge Rafael Videla recently died in prison while serving a life sentence for his crimes against humanity.”
Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla was announced dead on Friday. At 87, he died while serving life in prison for the abhorrent human rights abuses he conducted during the span of his ruthless military dictatorship from 1976-1983.
Gen. Videla became president after overthrowing Isabel Martnez de Perón, in a coup d’etat. His dictatorship, referred to as the “Dirty War,” is responsible for up to 30,000 disappearances, killings and tortures of subversives. Babies born into “dissident” families were stolen to give to military families.
” most of the controversy is based on his inaction towards the junta military as the leader of Argentina’s Jesuits during the Dirty War.
Federico Finchelstein, an Argentine historian at the New School for Social Research in New York, told the New York Times that “The combination of action and inaction by the church was instrumental in enabling the mass atrocities committed by the junta … Those like Francis that remained in silence during the repression also played by default a central role,” he said. “It was this combination of endorsement and either strategic or willful indifference that created the proper conditions for the state killings.”
Professor Finchelstein makes a valid point. In a region where church leaders have been vocal against military juntas in the past, it is very troubling that Pope Francis remained silent during such atrocities. It also doesn’t help his case that as “the head of the Argentine Conference of Bishops from 2005 to 2011, Francis resisted issuing a formal apology for the church’s actions during the Dirty War.”
Regardless of the politics behind these accusations, there is a bigger, more disturbing question we should be asking. Why wouldn’t a church leader step in or at least speak out while thousands of innocent lives were being kidnapped, tortured, and killed? His [the Pope’s] duty as a leader of the church is to represent the teachings of Christ, right? Would Jesus sit idly by while such atrocities are taking place? ” to think that someone who watched thousands of people die could be chosen as the head of the Roman Catholic Church.”
Did Pope Francis Have a Part in Argentina’s “Dirty War
Time Magazine, 3/14/2013
Cover Story: Pope of the Americas)
“Since he was anointed cardinal by Pope John Paul II in Rome in 2000, Jorge Bergoglio has had to contend with repeated allegations over his actions — and inaction — in the years of what is called the ‘Dirty War.’ Those claims have resurfaced now that he has become Pope Francis, the first Pontiff from the New World.
The general criticism against him has been that raised against most prominent personalities of the period of junta rule: that he perhaps did not do enough at the time to try to stop the generals, that he did not speak out publicly about the thousands of desaparecidos — the disappeared who vanished without a trace and whose mothers protested for answers in a plaza in Buenos Aires.
Bergoglio, as quoted in his own defense in the Time article, rather seems to show himself as an insider of the dictatorship.
“I never believed [the two priests] were involved in subversive activies,” Bergoglio said. “But because of their work with some priests in the slums they were exposed to the paranoia of the witch hunt.” Bergoglio said he moved fast to save their lives. “That same night when I heard of the kidnappings I started to move. I saw Videla twice and I saw Massera. In one of my attempts to meet Videla I found out who the military chaplain was who gave mass to Videla and convinced him to call in sick and managed to be named to replace him.” Bergoglio said that after the mass he managed to speak to Videla about the case, which would not have been an easy task at the time, given the climate of fear that reigned over these issues in Argentina then.”
Pope Francis and Argentina’s Dirty War: Nine Questions He Needs to Answer
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-truth-behind-pope-francis-breaking-the-silence-the-catholic-church-in-argentina-and-the-dirty-war/5327049 , 3/22/2013
[http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/295-164/16604-pope-francis-and-argentinas-dirty-war-nine-questions-he-needs-to-answer]
“Dogged journalists from Argentina and around the world have raised concern about the election of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to become Pope Francis. Was he, they ask, complicit with the Argentine military that kidnapped, tortured, raped, killed, and “disappeared” tens of thousands of people starting even before the coup of March 1976? The victims included two bishops and as many as 150 priests and nuns, and the atrocities reached the absolute horror of stealing newborn babies from their mothers and throwing living prisoners from helicopters and airplanes into the South Atlantic. …
Vatican spokesmen dismiss it as old smears spread by the anti-clerical left. We have heard this spin before, over ” the Church’s complicity with the Nazi Holocaust … Pope Francis needs to do better than that. If he wants to put the dirty war behind him, he needs to provide full and convincing answers to nine deeply disturbing questions.
1. Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, the imprisoned leader of the military junta, credits Papal Nuncio Po Laghi, Archbishop Raul Francisco Primatesta, and other Church leaders with advising the military junta and helping handle the situation of the disappeared. “In some cases,” the former dictator told Argentina’s Revista El Sur, “the Church offered its good offices and told the relatives to give up searching for their child because he [or she] was dead.” But the Church only did this, said Videla, “if it was certain that the relatives would not use the information politically” against the junta. How, Your Holiness, do you explain such close collaboration?
2. Church officials in Argentina have repeatedly asked forgiveness for their failure to speak out against the junta’s human rights violations, and Bergoglio personally called for the Church to do public penance for the sins of the dirty war. The Church obviously lacked courage and moral clarity, but it was far from silent. It publicly supported the military junta. Cardinal Archbishop Juan Carlos Aramburu gave communion and his blessing to the newly installed dictator, Gen. Videla. Bishop Jose Miquel Medina, the head chaplain of the armed forces, and other church leaders justified torture, while providing chaplains to help the torturers overcome their moral qualms. In his visit to Buenos Aires in April 1982, Pope John II publicly embraced Videla’s successor General Leopoldo Galtieri and refused to meet with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who were demanding justice for their disappeared relatives. When, Your Holiness, will the Church face up to the depth of its complicity?
3. In 2007, an Argentine court convicted Father Christian von Wernich, a police chaplain, for his complicity in seven murders, 42 abductions, and 31 cases of torture. According to BBC News, several former prisoners testified that he used his position as a priest to win their confidence and then passed what they told him to police torturers and killers. The former prisoners said that he attended several torture sessions and told the torturers that they were doing God’s work. Von Wernich is now serving a life sentence. As archbishop, Bergoglio ruled against giving holy communion to politicians and health care workers who facilitate abortion, while allowing von Wernich to remain a priest and provide communion to his fellow prisoners. Does Your Holiness truly believe that Church doctrine on abortion and contraception is more important to uphold than prohibitions against torture and mass murder?
4. In a case directly involving Bergoglio when he was the top Jesuit in Argentina, the army kidnapped, drugged, tortured, and held captive two of his subordinates who had been living and doing social work in a Buenos Aires slum. The army held Fathers Orlando Yorio and the Hungarian-born Franz “Francisco” Jalics blindfolded and in chains for five months and then dumped them half-naked and drugged into a field on the outskirts of the city. Soon after, Father Yorio sent the Jesuit hierarchy in Rome a first-hand report in which he accused Bergoglio of promising to speak to people from the armed forces and assure them that the two priests were not working with the left-wing guerrillas. But, wrote Yorio, Bergoglio spread rumors that we were. “We began to suspect his honesty,” wrote Yorio, who reportedly forgave Bergoglio, but never withdrew his charges. Would Your Holiness release the late Father Yorio’s full report and your detailed response to it?
5. Father Jalics made similar charges and has never withdrawn them. Now at a monastery in Germany, he says he has forgiven Bergoglio and does not want to comment on the new pontiff’s role in what happened. Would Your Holiness ask him, in the name of truth, to testify about what he knows?
6. In 1979, Father Jalics was living in Germany and asked Bergoglio to help him get his passport renewed. Bergoglio made the formal request, but The Guardian has published a typed note from the foreign ministry archives that “appears to prove that Bergoglio said one thing and did the opposite.” The note records that Jalics and Yorio “lived in small communities that the Jesuit Superior [Bergoglio] disbanded in February 1976. They refused to obey, requesting that they be removed from the order.” According to the note, the information came from Bergoglio, who recommended that the foreign ministry not renew Jalics’ passport. How, Your Holiness, do you respond to this damning evidence?
7. Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina’s best-known investigative journalists, uncovered the above document and interviewed many of the dissident voices within the Church, presenting their evidence in his left-leaning Peronist daily Pagina 12 and his best-selling “El Silencio: De Paulo VI a Bergoglio.” He is also a direct participant in the story, having shown the courage after the coup to take up arms in the guerrilla war against the military dictator …Would Your Holiness ask your defenders to stop trying to kill the messenger and deal with the specific evidence Verbitsky offers?
8. Pope Francis has long talked of making the poor central to the Church, encouraging Christian charity toward them and criticizing inadequate government and even IMF policies. But, in line with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, he worked to suppress Liberation Theology, which called for helping the poor to organize to fight for their own rights. This appears to have been an underlying issue in his treatment of Fathers Yorio and Jalics and in the heated divisions within Argentina’s Catholic Church. Will Your Holiness now reopen the debate and allow defenders of Liberation Theology to speak freely within the Church?
9. Horacio Verbitsky and other critics are quick to credit Bergoglio with helping many of the junta’s opponents and even hiding them from arrest. “I know people he helped,” said Father 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.” Over the years, Your Holiness, you have been a reluctant, vague, and often evasive witness about your role — and the role of your fellow priests — in the dirty war. Would you now, in the spirit of truth and reconciliation, give independent journalists and historians access to Church archives, which — along with in-depth interviews and already available government archives — will allow them to set the record straight?”
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, author Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he writes on international affairs.
[Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.]
Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents in 67 countries; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India, Sweden and the US; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents, Kerala, India; Minority Perspective, UK; Einartysken, Sweden: Saker Vineyard, Germany; Dissident Voice; Ta Kung Pao; Uruknet; Voice of Detroit; Mathaba; Ethiopian Review; Palestine Chronicle; India Times; MalaysiaSun; China Daily; South China Morning Post; Come Home America; CubaNews; TurkishNews; HistoryNews Network; Vermont Citizen News have published his articles; 300 of which are available at: click http://www.opednews.com/author/author1723.html ; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign: (King Condemned US Wars) http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/ and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign http://prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanitynow.blogspot.com/ featuring a country by country history of US crimes and laws pertaining.
