Pope Francis (Bergoglio) and Argentina’s Dictator Videla, 1976
Well, there certainly is a lot of “happy talk” about the selection of the new Pope yesterday.
First from the Americas!
First Latino!
Advocate of the poor!
But beneath that thin veneer is yet another dark history of the Catholic Church.
Pope Francis (Bergoglio) is from Argentina. In “Inside The Vatican, Part 3” we took a look at the flood of Nazi war criminals into Argentina at the end of World War 2:
As Argentine journalist Uki Goni describes in “The Real Odessa“,
”Perhaps the clearest example of the Church’s central role was a letter drafted on 31 August by Bishop Alois Hudal to President Juan Peron, requesting 5,000 visas for German and Austrian soldiers’, probably the single largest such appeal made to the Argentine general. These were not refugees, Hudal explained, they were anti-communist fighters whose wartime “sacrifice” had saved Europe from Soviet domination. In other words, in Hudal’s shorthand, they were German and Austrian Nazis.”…
“Like other Nazi collaborators who later helped war criminals escape to Argentina, Hudal had attempted to reconcile Christianity with Hitlarism…
“Hudel”.. “concluded that Hitler was preparing for the consolidation of a Christian Europe”. (Goni, “The Real Odessa”, p230).
This transfer of insurgent Nazis, top S.S. men that composed part of the underground “Odessa” had a huge impact on Argentina’s financial and political system, leading to what is now referred to as “The Dirty War”.
Author Uki Goni, quoted above penned this critique of the new Pope today:
“Questions remain over Pope Francis’ role during Argentina’s dictatorship”
“Despite the joyful celebrations outside the Municipal Cathedral in Buenos Aires yesterday, the news of Latin America’s first pope was clouded by lingering concerns about the role of the church – and its new head – during Argentina’s brutal military dictatorship.
The Catholic church and Pope Francis have been accused of a complicit silence and worse during the “dirty war” of murders and abductions carried out by the junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.
(snip)
“In February, a court noted during the sentencing of three former military men to life imprisonment for the killings of two priests that the church hierarchy had “closed its eyes” to the killing of progressive priests.
As head of the Jesuit order from 1973 to 1979, Jorge Bergoglio – as the new pope was known until yesterday – was a member of the hierarachy during the period when the wider Catholic church backed the military government and called for their followers to be patriotic.
Bergoglio twice refused to testify in court about his role as head of the Jesuit order. When he eventually appeared in front of a judge in 2010, he was accused by lawyers of being evasive.
The main charge against Bergoglio involves the kidnapping of two Jesuit priests, Orland Yorio and Francisco Jalics, who were taken by Navy officers in May 1976 and held under inhumane conditions for the missionary work they conducted in the country’s slums, a politically risky activity at the time.”
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“During the Dirty War, which raged from the mid-1970s through the early 1980s, Argentina’s military “disappeared” thousands of Argentines, as many as 30,000, according to some human rights estimates. Captives from all walks of life were systematically tortured, raped and murdered, sometimes drowned and other times buried in mass graves. After the military government collapsed in 1983, a truth commission began documenting the grisly events. But the mysteries of the missing babies were among the hardest to solve.”
The missing babies is still another shocking part of Argentine history -continuing:
“According to testimony given to Argentina’s truth commission, Bianco oversaw nighttime Caesarian sections or induced early deliveries on women captives. A few minutes after the deliveries, Bianco pulled the babies away from sobbing mothers, according to witnesses who were at the Campo de Mayo military hospital. Bianco then drove the women to a military airport. There, they were sedated, shackled together with other captives in groups of 30, and loaded onto a Hercules military cargo plane.
At about 11 p.m. at night, the plane flew out over the dark water of the Rio de la Plata or the Atlantic Ocean. According to the testimony, the new mothers and other victims were shoved into the water to drown. Back at the hospital, witnesses said, some of the babies were dispatched to orphanages but most were divvied up among the Argentine military officers, especially those whose wives could not bear children. The babies sometimes arrived at their new homes wrapped in army coats.”
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UPDATE from Consortium News:
“Regarding the practice of harvesting babies from doomed women and then farming them out to military families, Bergoglio has insisted that he didn’t know of the practice until well after the Dirty War was over.
However, Estela de la Cuadra family contradicted Bergoglio’s claim of ignorance in citing a 1977 case in which Jesuits in Rome urged Bergoglio to intervene regarding the kidnapping of Estela’s sister Elena, who was five months’ pregnant. The police reported back that the woman was a communist and thus was killed but her baby girl was first delivered and then given to an “important” family.
“Bergoglio has a very cowardly attitude when it comes to something so terrible as the theft of babies,” Estela de la Cuadra told the AP. “The question is how to save his name, save himself. But he can’t keep these allegations from reaching the public. The people know how he is.”
The future Pope and Argentina’s Dictator Videla
Let’s dispence with all the happy talk.
Ratzinger, the last Pope (and former Nazi) was in a damned hurry to get this new Pope in right before the Easter celebration.
Oh Joy.
The motivation was to smooth over the countless Vatican scandals that are converging on the church in this new era of instant communication.
If there was a God, how could she overlook these sins?
For more on The Vatican Scandals see:
[…] Catholics now have a new Pope which means that the faithful have passed Dojo Rat’s candidacy by. This, in turn, ruins my chance at joining the Vatican’s inner circle. In response to losing (and too much beer), the Rat has published Inside the Vatican, Part 4. […]