VATICAN CITY
The Guardian
Associated Press in Vatican city
Tuesday 25 October 2016
The Vatican and Argentina’s bishops have finished cataloguing their archives from the country’s dictatorship era, and will soon make them available to victims and their relatives who have long accused the church of complicity with the military rulers.
A joint statement on Tuesday said the process of digitizing the archives had been completed and that procedures to access the information would be forthcoming. No date was set, and the opening for now is restricted to victims, detainees, their relatives and the religious superiors of victims who were priests or nuns.
Official estimates say about 13,000 people were killed or disappeared in a government-sponsored crackdown on leftist dissidents during Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship. Human rights activists believe the real number was as high as 30,000.
The statement said the decision to open the church’s archives was taken at the express direction of Pope Francis, “in the service of truth, justice and peace”.
Francis – then the Rev Jorge Mario Bergoglio – was the young Jesuit superior in Argentina during the military dictatorship, making his decision to open the archives all the more remarkable.
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