ARGENTINA
The Guardian (UK)
Uki Goni and Jonathan Watts
The Guardian, Wednesday 13 March 2013
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.
The evidence is sketchy and contested. Documents have been destroyed and many of those who were victims or perpetrators have died in the years that followed. The moral argument is clear, but the reality of life at that time put many people in a grey position. It was dangerous at that time to speak out and risk being labelled a subversive. But many, including priests and bishops, did so and subsequently disappeared. Those who stayed silent have subsequently had to live with their consciences — and sometimes the risk of a trial.
Its behaviour during that dark period in Argentine history was so unsaintly that in 2000 the Argentine Catholic church itself made a public apology for its failure to take a stand against the generals. “We want to confess before God everything we have done badly,” Argentina’s Episcopal Conference said at that time.
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