BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
Crux
July 18, 2019
By Inés San Martín
Pope Francis’s Argentina today is a polarized country, something visible virtually everywhere in the streets of Buenos Aires, the nation’s capital and political center. People of all walks of life right now are carrying colorful handkerchiefs expressing their views on legalizing abortion: Those in favor wear green, those against it light blue.
The color coding reflects a bitter national debate following a narrow vote in the senate last year defeating a bill to expand abortion rights. The division today now on display has long been about more than abortion, extending to politics, the economy, views on history’s first Argentine pontiff and even Argentina’s history.
According to Bishop Daniel Fernandez from Jujuy, in Argentina’s remote northwest, this national polarization, dubbed here as a “crack,” is something that deeply worries the pope.
“Pope Francis is concerned about this famous ‘crack’ that grows and doesn’t allow us social friendship, that beautiful concept that means we can think differently and have different philosophies and praxis but when it comes to generating the common good, we can each put the best we have,” Fernandez said on Monday.
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