DAL SITO AMERICAN SOUTH AND NORTH, OMBRE SU PAPA FRANCESCO DURANTE LA DITTATURA DEI MILITARI IN ARGENTINA

 E' solito di questo blog offrire vari aspetti e punti di vista ,  Jorge Mario Bergoglio era capo dei Gesuiti Argentini durante la dittatura dei generali dal 1976 al 1983 ( caddero dopo la sconfitta alle Falkland ) , come ricorderete  , migliaia di persone scomparvero e furono assassinate in modo orribile , scaraventate nell'Oceano, gettate dagli aerei.  Le battaglie delle madri della Piazza De Maio sono note a tutti.  In questo testo del sito AMERICAN  SOUTH AND NORTH, che è scritto in inglese ( per  i  lettori non english speaking consiglio un programma di traduzione disponibile in rete ) si parla di un interrogatorio a cui il nuovo Papa sarebbe stato sottoposto in merito ad  un rapimento di due preti da parte della giunta militare allora al potere e di una certa vicinanza del Cardinale stesso con la giunta del Generale Gualtieri anche lui di chiare origini italiane.
Il sito è molto di parte ( come leggere IL GIORNALE O LIBERO ), ma e' comunque una testimonianza che  propongo alla  vostra attenzione.

Nel testo e' interessante notare come venga posta l'attenzione su un differente  comportamento dell'altro cardinale latino americano papabile, il brasiliane Scherer, durante la dittatura della  giunta militare brasiliana.

E' da appuntare anche la freddezza con cui la Presidente Argentina Kirchner ha commentato l'elezione del suo connazionale al soglio pontificio. La ragione è , secondo i media internazionali, da ricercare su una diatriba che oppone i due sui matrimoni gay,  a cui naturalmente il nuovo papa si oppone.  Vi ricordo pero' che anche la Presidente Kirchner non è scevra da critiche e ha molte cose da nascondere. L'Argentina sarebbe poi secondo alcuni quotidiani economici nuovamente sull'orlo di un dissesto finanziario in stile greco.

DI SEGUITO IL TESTO 




As most are aware by now, Catholic cardinals selected Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope, the first time a Pope is from Latin America. (In addition to being the first Latin American pope, he’s also the first Jesuit pope.) There had been much hope for a non-European pope, and Bergoglio fits that bill.
However, his election is more than a little surprising, given his past. Bergoglio was the head of the Jesuits in Argentina during the military dictatorship of 1976-1983, during which the military murdered upwards of 30,000 people (as well as kidnapping hundreds of children whose parents the regime had tortured and murdered). Unlike Catholic officials in neighboring Chile and Brazil, where priests, bishops, and even cardinals spoke out against human rights abuses and defended victims of abuses, in Argentina, the Catholic Church was openly complicit in the military regime’s repression. Bergoglio was not exempt from this involvement: military officers have testified that Bergoglio helped the Argentine military regime hide political prisoners when human rights activists visited the country. And Bergoglio himself had to testify regarding the kidnapping of two priests who he stripped of their religious licenses shortly before they were kidnapped and tortured. This isn’t just a case of Bergoglio being a member of an institution that supported a brutal regime; it’s a case of Bergoglio himself having ties, direct and indirect, to that very regime. For those who hoped for a Pope who might represent a more welcoming and open path for the Catholic Church, the selection of Bergoglio has to be a let-down.
This is why the selection of Bergoglio over Scherer is disappointing. Thirteen years younger than Bergoglio, Scherer’s path was notably different. To be clear, the Catholic Church supported Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-1985) in its early years; however, as Ken Serbin has demonstrated, already by the late-1960s and early-1970s, high-ranking officials in the church hierarchy were secretly meeting with representatives from the dictatorship in order to try to pressure military rulers to respect human rights, even for alleged “subversives.” By the latter half of the 1970s, the Brazilian Catholic church had become one of the more vocal opponents of human rights violations under the regime, and the Archdiocese of São Paulo ultimately played a central role in secretly accessing, collecting, and publishing files on torture, murder, and repression under the dictatorship, eventually published in 1985 as Brasil: Nunca Mais (literally Brazil: Never Again; in English, Torture in Brazil). Where Bergoglio was active in a context where the Argentine Church openly supported military regimes and human rights violations, Scherer was active in a context where members of the Brazilian Church openly took a stand against such abuses and against the regime that committed them.
A few weeks ago, a student asked me if I thought the cardinals would finally pick a Latin America pope. I commented that if they were smart, they’d diversify by picking a Brazilian and democratizing a bit, but I feared they’d pick an Italian and show a refusal to reform and democratize the church. With the selection of Bergoglio, it appears they’ve chosen to split the difference, diversifying beyond Europe while continuing the conservatism that defined recent popes.
We’ll see how it turns out – perhaps Francisco I works out well, and perhaps he uses his past and his new position to try not only to transform the Church but to provide a platform that advocates human rights and the punishment of human rights violators. However, it is disappointing that the cardinals selected somebody tied to one of the most violent and brutal of Latin American dictatorships. The cardinals could have made an implicit statement about supporting human rights under authoritarian regimes, and they failed to do so. It’s not the end of the Church, but it’s another misstep they didn’t have to make.