The Global Mail
By Nick Olle
March 19, 2013
On March 13, at a dinner with the cardinals who had just elected him as the new pontiff, Pope Francis quipped, “May God forgive you for what you have done.” When just two days later the Holy See publicly defended the pontiff — against accusations of complicity in human-rights abuses — men of lesser faith might have looked back at the Pope’s joke with suspicion.
No sooner had Pope Francis first appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica than whispers of his having had a shady past began circulating. As whispers tend to do, they multiplied and the story spread like wildfire around the globe. The Catholic Church has enough problems, people began to say, how could it fail so badly in its background checks?
Where had this story come from?
It dates back more than three decades to Argentina’s so-called “dirty war”; the 1976 to 1983 military dictatorship that killed an estimated 30,000 people. The most serious allegation against Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio (as Pope Francis was known until last week) is that in May 1976 he allowed the junta to abduct two Jesuit priests, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics. According to Bergoglio’s chief accuser, Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky, he withdrew protection from the two men, effectively enabling the junta to kidnap and torture them.
Verbitsky’s claim is based on conversations with Fr Jalics, who was released along with Fr Yorio after five months in captivity. In a statement released by the German Jesuit order where Fr Jalics now works, he said: “Under the assumption that we also had something to do with the guerrillas we were arrested … I cannot comment on the role of Fr Bergoglio in these events.” He added that he was now “reconciled” with the events and wished Pope Francis well.
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