UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
by Tom Roberts | Mar. 26, 2013
Within days of the election of Pope Francis, stories began to surface about his conduct as the former Fr. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, head of the Jesuit order in Argentina during that country’s “Dirty War,” as well as his handling of the sex abuse crisis later as head of the Buenos Aires archdiocese.
The stories revisit two of the most difficult crises that have confronted the modern church — the role of its leaders in countries split by violent dictatorships and in dealing with clerics accused of sexual crimes against children. In both instances involving Bergoglio, the reporting has included liberal use of such terms as “cloudy” and “murky.”
Bergoglio was appointed Jesuit provincial when he was 37, a position he held from 1973-79, a time of civil and religious turmoil. Religious orders were losing members at a significant rate at the time; additionally, in many countries in Latin America, orders were torn between their traditional ministries and a new sense of obligation to marginalized and oppressed.
The period during which Bergoglio headed the order in Argentina coincided with the rule of a vicious military junta that killed as many as 30,000 in what was billed as a fight against communism and was officially called the Process of National Reorganization. The purge of “enemies” of the regime, which included thousands who resisted the dictatorship, was carried out in some instances with the cooperation of religious authorities.
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