ARGENTINA
The New York Times
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: March 21, 2013
CARACAS, Venezuela — A Jesuit priest whose kidnapping by the Argentine military raised questions about the actions of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, during that country’s so-called Dirty War said in a statement this week that Father Bergoglio did not initiate the detention by reporting him and another priest to the authorities.
“These are the facts: Orlando Yorio and I were not reported by Father Bergoglio,” Father Franz Jalics said in the statement posted on a German Jesuit Web site, mentioning the other priest who was kidnapped with him in 1976. The statement was dated Wednesday. “It is thus wrong to claim that our capture was initiated by Father Bergoglio.”
But the statement by Father Jalics did not address a contention by Father Yorio, who died in 2000, that Father Bergoglio had sought to undermine their work in a Buenos Aires slum, taking steps that may have left them vulnerable to the military. Father Bergoglio was head of the Jesuit order in Argentina at the time of their kidnapping.
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