NEW YORK
New York Daily News
Argentina’s best-known investigative reporter, Horacio Verbitsky, accuses the pontiff, who is also known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, of allowing two priests who served under him to be kidnapped. The pope, as well as some human rights activists, disputes that account, contending he actually tried to get them freed.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Juan Gonzalez
Even as millions rejoice at the first Catholic pontiff from Latin America, troubling questions persist over the role Pope Francis played during Argentina’s notorious Dirty War.
In 1976, right-wing military leaders overthrew that country’s elected government and installed Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla as dictator. Coup leaders then launched a campaign of secret kidnappings, torture and murder of suspected leftists and opposition figures. Estimates of the dead range up to 30,000.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, then head of that country’s Jesuit order, has long been accused by Argentina’s best-known investigative reporter, Horacio Verbitsky, of being complicit in the military’s kidnapping and torture of two priests who served under him.
Verbitsky’s claim is rejected by some human rights leaders, including Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for documenting the junta’s atrocities.
“Perhaps he (Bergoglio) didn’t have the courage of other priests, but he never collaborated with the dictatorship,” Esquivel said.
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