The pope ends up being the most elusive target for Mauricio Macri’s marketing
By
Sebastián Lacunza
@sebalacunza
Twenty-two minutes, a few words and a chilliness that was almost palpable. The symbols surrounding the meeting between Pope Francis and President Mauricio Macri ended up being unavoidable even for those who take great pains to conceal the marked distance between the two heads of state.
Jorge Bergoglio, the priest with the permanently sullen gesture as archbishop of Buenos Aires, and, then the warm, jovial and funny pope, is an expert in knowing the value of a photographed smile. Yesterday, there was barely an instant of a relaxed half-smile when he greeted Juliana Awada, Macri’s wife.
The first lady’s reception was the only concession of the protocol, which forbids it, a priest with close ties to Francis told the Herald yesterday.
“You have to analyze everything: the 22 minutes, the table (instead of the way he meets with other world leaders in a living room), the black-clad members of the Vatican,” the priest said.
When Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s government ended, many Macri allies thought that it would be the end of the good ties to the Peronist leader. After all, until 2013, Bergoglio, as Buenos Aires archbishop, had enjoyed a cordial relationship with the PRO’s mayorship, beyond a rare minor disagreement. There would be, perhaps, a time of reconciliation.
But the weeks that passed after December 10 were filled with gestures of indifference, which gave way to amazing essays to cover them up by Macri’s media allies. The virtual lack of public communications was explained as merely part of a strident diplomatic protocol, as if Bergoglio wasn’t a man who is often fond of putting a personal touch in his relationships. They insisted that sending a rosary to the imprisoned Jujuy social leader Milagro Sala was nothing more than a merciful ritual, just like Christ forgave the worst sinners.
That close circle had to ignore that the person who delivered the rosary was a missionary who got to Sala through the campground that the Túpac Amaru organization set up in Plaza de Mayo, and that Bergoglio’s spokespeople indicated that they saw the detention of a social activist as an act of racial discrimination. There was room for theories about cordial messages toward Macri that were lost along the way and a close circle that purposely misinformed the pope about his “old porteño acquaintance,” as the president called him yesterday. According to these gentle reflections, the pope doesn’t know how to surf the Internet and needs to be told about the reality.
Francis is a complex figure with whom it’s difficult to have a relationship, leading some of his critics from yesteryear (case in point, the Kirchnerites and CFK herself) to see a Peronist, progressive and almost revolutionary leader. His past as an intellectual and provincial Jesuit offers contradictory examples in terms of the role he played
during the dictatorship, with testimonies that go from saving lives that were at risk to letting rivals fall into the hands of repressors. In the democratic era, particularly in the 1990s when the right-wing Carlos Menem was the president, he was a staunch opponent to the more conservative sectors and, at the very least, careful with Church funds (which led to the abrupt downgrading of the former Rosario bishop José Luis Mollaghan).
When analyzing serious gestures and hurtful allusions, there are enough reasons to understand why some Kirchnerites, now devout parishioners, saw him as the “head of the opposition.” Until 2013, his frequent calls to “not seek out justice with a thirst for vengance and hate” fit right in
with the speech of those who opposed the trials for crimes against humanity. In the same way, his words about marriage equality that was sponsored by CFK (“let’s not be naive: this is not about a simple political fight, it is the destructive pretension to God’s plan” and “the envy of the devil”), were too heartfal to believe they amounted to a “concession” to the most conservative sectors of the Church.
But once he became Francis, Bergoglio changed. Of course there are permanent marks in his discourse, such as his devotion to a poor church (“Come vorrei una Chiesa povera e per i poveri!” he said shortly after taking office), his austerity and combating the “ideology of the disposable.”
But a profound rupture in both style and substance is evident in his papacy, because he’s a Peronist, for his political role, because he freed himself from obligations, because sitting on one of the world’s most symbolic chairs in the twilight of his life is a unique opportunity. Due to all of that, or at least due to a little bit of each thing, a pope has emerged who, when in Bolivia, fights against capitalism, vindicates a revolutionary priest and hugs Evo Morales; and if he goes to Mexico, he denounces the complicity of the political and church leadership with
corruption and narcotrafficking.
Macri is not a man who is desperate to revere nor be revered. If someone is cold to him, he is cold right back. If he didn’t personally, then many of his allies likely dedicated prayers so that Francis would devote to the president at least half of the nice gestures he had toward Milagro Sala when he welcomed her in Saint Peter in June, 2014. It wasn’t to be.
While the popularity wave is high, Macri can calmly live with that indifference.