ROME
Tucson Sentinel
Posted Mar 18, 2013
Jason Berry
GlobalPost
ROME — The news from Argentina on what Pope Francis did, or didn’t do during the years of the dirty war has shadowed the early days of his papacy, prompting the Vatican to denounce reporting to that effect.
Could it be, on this one, that the Vatican may be right?
How to square the image of a cleric accused by some of assisting fascist generals — the men guilty of kidnappings, torture, abduction of newborns whose mothers were murdered — with the pope of gentle demeanor who blessed a seeing-eye dog as he charmed the media at an audience on Saturday?
At issue are Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s years in the byzantine society of Argentina when it hit moral rock bottom.
His family carried its own nightmare of Italy’s descent into political madness.
“My father escaped from Italy because of fascism,” the pope’s sister, Maria Elena Bergoglio, has told Paolo Mastrolilli of La Stampa / Vatican Insider in Buenos Aires. “Do you think it is possible that my brother could be an accomplice of a military dictatorship? It would have been like betraying his memory.”
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