Argentine Church Under the Shadow of the Dirty War
Victor R. Caivano/Associated PressArgentines celebrated the election of Pope Francis at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Buenos Aires on Wednesday.
LONDON — The election of an Argentine to the
papacy has revived a polemic about the role of the Roman Catholic
Church during his country’s so-called “dirty war” and about his own dealings with a military junta that murdered up to 30,000 citizens.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was head of the Jesuits
in Argentina between 1973 and 1979, a period that saw the worst
excesses of a campaign of repression that targeted real and perceived
opponents of the military dictatorship, including radical clerics.
The Argentine justice system has conducted
numerous investigations into the junta’s crimes and no personal blame
has been attached to Pope Francis, but the church in Argentina continues
to live under the shadow of the dirty war.
As recently as last December, a provincial tribunal denounced the “complicity”
of the church in the human rights violations of the dictatorship and a
continued reticence on behalf of church authorities and clerics to throw
light on such crimes.
It was a dark period for the country and the church, as a junta headed by Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, an ultra-traditionalist Catholic, employed torture and murder in a self-declared crusade against godless communism.
The victims included priests and seminarians who worked with the poor. Two French nuns were among those who were thrown alive from aircraft into the South Atlantic.
With Cardinal Bergoglio’s elevation as Pope Francis, questions have once more been raised about how much he knew of the abuses and how much he did to try to prevent them.
The controversy stems from an accusation in 2010
by Horacio Verbitsky, a journalist and former leftist guerrilla, that
the Jesuit leader had withdrawn his protection from two fellow priests
who were subsequently kidnapped and tortured in 1976. They were later
released.
Cardinal Bergoglio told a tribunal in 2010
that he had met with General Videla and his deputy, Adm. Emilio Massera,
to plead for the lives of the abducted clerics.
He was also called to testify in a case
that involved the forced adoption of babies born to female detainees, a
phenomenon he said he was unaware of until years after the fact.
The future pope told his biographer he had
helped to hide potential targets of the junta and “I did what I could,
given my age and my limited contacts, to plead on behalf of those who
had been seized.”
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was among those who leapt to the defense of the new pope.
He told the BBC his fellow Argentine had no
links to the military dictatorship. “There were bishops who were
complicit, but not Bergoglio,” he said in an interview.
“I personally know many bishops who called on the military junta to free prisoners and priests and whose pleas were rejected.”
Although some clerics actively helped the
military by attending secret detention centers at which suspects were
tortured, the main charge against the church is that it was guilty of
the sin of omission by failing to do enough to help those in need.
Argentine Catholic leaders have long admitted
the church’s failings during the dirty war. As archbishop of Buenos
Aires, Cardinal Bergoglio last year led bishops in an acknowledgment of the church’s failure to protect its flock during the 1970s.
However, the statement angered some human
rights activists by placing equal blame for the violence on the military
and its opponents.
The statement was in part a response to trial testimony
by General Videla in which he spoke of the Church’s cooperation during
the dirty war and boasted of his “excellent, very cordial, sincere and
open” relationship with its leaders.
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