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New pope's role during Argentina's military era disputed
Accusers draw ties between Catholic church and 70s junta, saying Jorge Bergoglio failed to shield two priests
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A young Jorge Mario Bergoglio pictured in Buenos Aires. Photograph: Argenpress/Rex Features
Pope Francis is known in his native Argentina as a man of austere habits, long pregnant pauses in conversation and a reticence about discussing himself. For supporters, this is proof of his humility, which was further underlined for them in his first address as pope to the masses in St Peter's Square, where he eschewed the usual jewelled crucifix in favour of a simple wooden cross.
For critics, however – and there are many in his home country – it may have more to do with allegations that he and the Roman Catholic church were guilty of the sin of omission – and perhaps worse – during the brutal military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983.
Those dark years cast the longest shadow over the elevation of Jorge Bergoglio, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, as the new Vicar of Christ, and continues to divide a nation.
While Argentina rang with celebratory church bells at the news of the first Latin American pope, some were seized by doubt and confusion. "I can't believe it, I don't know what to do, I'm in so much anguish and so enraged," wrote Graciela Yorio in an email published in the Argentine press on Thursday morning.
In 1976, her brother, Orlando Yorio, along with another Jesuit priest, Francisco Jalics, were seized by navy troops in the slums of Buenos Aires and held and tortured for five months at the ESMA camp, a navy base in the capital where 5,000 people were murdered by the military junta.
The two priests served under Bergoglio, who is accused in some quarters of abandoning them to the military after they became involved in leftist social movements.
His chief accuser is journalist Horacio Verbitsky, whose book El Silencio paints a disquieting picture of Bergoglio's relationship with the priests who sought his protection when they felt their lives were in danger from the military because of their social work in the slums.
Verbitsky believes the then chief of the Jesuits in Argentina played a double game, aiding Yorio and Jalics while expressing concern about their activities to military officers.
But Verbitsky's views are seen as overly simplistic by other observers of that era. "Verbitsky is not wrong, but he doesn't understand the complexity of Bergoglio's position back then when things were so dangerous," said Robert Cox, a British journalist and former editor of the Buenos Aires Herald, the only newspaper in Argentina that reported the murders as they happened. "He can't see how difficult it was to operate under those circumstances."
But Cox, who moved to North Carolina after death threats against his family in 1979, suggests Bergoglio could have done more. "I don't think he gave them in," he said. "But Bergoglio didn't protect them, he didn't speak out."
Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the 1980 Nobel peace prize for documenting the junta's atrocities, takes a similar view. "Perhaps he didn't have the courage of other priests, but he never collaborated with the dictatorship," he told the Associated Press. "Bergoglio was no accomplice of the dictatorship. He can't be accused of that." The vast majority of Argentinians view the dictatorship era as appalling.
Others suggest that Bergoglio was actually a hero. Francesca Ambrogetti, co-author of The Jesuit – a flattering biography of the new pope – says Bergoglio told her he met the dictator Jose Rafael Videla and Eduardo Massera, the head of the navy which was in charge of some concentration camps, to try and intercede on behalf of the priests.
She said he took great risks to save others. "I believe he did all he could at that time," she said. "It's a complex issue that is very difficult to explain after so many years."
In a 2005 interview Bergoglio himself said he moved fast to save their lives. "That same night when I heard of the kidnappings I started to move. In one of my attempts to meet Videla I found out who the military chaplain was who gave mass to Videla and convinced that priest to call in sick and I 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.
That era continues to polarise Argentina, where the current left-leaning government has reopened several prominent cases in the past decade. Details are murky. Few from that era can escape with entirely clear consciences. Many turned a blind eye and kept silent. Accusations of this sin of omission have been levelled at Bergoglio.
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 andVatican 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.
As he has shown by rising through the ranks of the church Bergoglio is an extremely astute politician, who uses the sparseness of words and space to press home his considerable influence on government and legislature.
"He is a participant in Argentine politics, but in his own way – very low profile. More politicians pass through his office than either the opposition or the government would care to admit," said Washington Uranga, social science professor at the University of Buenos Aires.
"People go in search of coverage, to ask him to use his influence. In other cases, he calls on them to come, but it is always in his territory. It's always in his office."
When Bergoglio does occasionally speak out in public, it tends to be with allusions rather than direct references to Argentina's darkest era. When trials reopened in 2006, he suggested it was not a good idea to churn up the problems of the past, although this was seen as a comment on the rise in the number of trials.
"We are happy to reject anger and endless conflict, because we don't believe in chaos and disorder … Wretched are those who are vindictive and spiteful," he said in a public sermon.
Additional reporting by Sebastián Lacunza