When Pope Francis was Jorge Bergoglio: An uncomfortable archbishop in Buenos Aires

When Pope Francis was Jorge Bergoglio: An uncomfortable archbishop in Buenos Aires The pontiff confronted the Kirchner administration — which considered him ‘right-wing’ — and was questioned for his role during the country’s last military dictatorship (1976-1983), when he was the leader of the Jesuits in Argentina When Pope Francis was Jorge Bergoglio, he occupied a small, solitary room in an annex of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral, located on one side of Plaza de Mayo. He cooked his own food, wore simple clothes and moved around the Argentine capital via public transportation. In his office, he received politicians, union leaders and businesspeople.

He soon became famous for his profile as a methodical and calculating strategist. “A politician in a cassock,” people used to say of Bergoglio. This was meant either as praise or criticism, depending on the speaker’s affiliation.



He was also considered to be an effective administrator of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires . Even with his slow gait, Bergoglio would have taken no more than three minutes to walk the path that connects the Cathedral to the Casa Rosada, Argentina’s presidential palace. But he never did, because he was never invited.

Before being elected pope in March 2013, Bergoglio was the archbishop of Buenos Aires. His relationship with then-Argentine president Cristina Kirchner — who governed from 2007 until 2015 — was not good. In fact, it was almost as bad as the one he had with her husband, Néstor Kirchner, who ruled from 2003 until 2007.

The couple considered Bergoglio to be “right-wing,” or a “right-wing Peronist,” to be more precise. They also accused him of alleged complicity with the military dictatorship in the 1970s, when he was Provincial Superior of the Jesuits. Bergoglio always rejected these epithets and accusations.

“I was never affiliated to the Peronist party, nor was I a Peronist militant or sympathizer. To affirm that is a lie,” Pope Francis noted in the book Pope Francis: The Shepherd , the product of long conversations with journalists Sergio Rubin and Francesca Ambrogetti. “My writings on social justice led to people saying I’m a Peronist.

And if I had a Peronist conception of politics, what would be wrong with that?” he asked, as if to definitively close the subject. Dismantling his role during the military government wasn’t so easy. Leftist factions with an affinity for Juan Domingo Perón — who governed from 1946 until 1955 and again from 1973 until his death in 1974 — accused Bergoglio of having played at least a questionable role in the case of the forced disappearance and torture suffered by Jesuit priests Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics.

The priests — who were detained at the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy (ESMA) — carried out social work in the shantytowns of the capital and ultimately ended up in a military dungeon. In 2010, Bergoglio was summoned to court and gave testimony on the matter for over four hours. During those years, journalist Horacio Verbitsky — a supporter of the Kirchners and former member of the Montoneros, a now-defunct left-wing Peronist guerilla organization — accused Bergoglio of having “handed over” Jalics and Yorio to their captors, from his position as a provincial superior.

But Bergoglio told the judges who interrogated him that he had interceded for the priests, pleading before dictator Jorge Rafael Videla and his deputy in the military junta, Admiral Eduardo Massera. In May 2023, during a visit to Hungary, Pope Francis recalled the statement he gave. “Some in the [Kirchner] government wanted my head on a platter [.

..] they brought up not so much this matter of Jalics [who was of Hungarian origin], but rather, they questioned my entire set of actions during the dictatorship,” the Pontiff told the audience of 32 Jesuits .

“In the end, my innocence was proven. When Jalics and Yorio were arrested by the military, the situation in Argentina was confusing; it was not at all clear what should be done. I did what I felt I had to do, to defend them,” he added.

The person who came to Bergoglio’s defense at the time was Adolfo Pérez Esquivel , who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 for his fight for human rights during the Argentine dictatorship. “There were bishops who were complicit in the dictatorship, but Bergoglio was not,” he affirmed. In a 2016 book about the pope, historian Marcelo Larraquy argues that, in the 1970s, Bergoglio “sheltered priests, seminarians and laypeople, who were persecuted or at risk.

But it was also true that he did not publicly denounce state terrorism, as other bishops did, such as Enrique Angelelli.” Angelelli was assassinated by the military in August 1976. Instead, Larraquy clarifies, “Bergoglio used internal channels within the Church, [or he would reach out to] the nuncio, or the superior general of the Society of Jesus in Rome.

Bergoglio applied a policy of protection and silence.” That silence is what cast a shadow over his role during those dark years. The issue, however, seemed buried until March 13, 2013, when Argentina woke up to the news that the archbishop they used to bump into on the street had been elected Pope.

The political scene, however, was no longer the same. Cristina Kirchner decided that the Bergoglio who had lashed out at her with his sermons — and, for years, had been the only significant opposition voice to her rule — was suddenly “the first Argentine Pope.” She immediately traveled to the Vatican and showered him with gifts.

Pope Francis no longer suffered the scourge of the Kirchners, but he couldn’t prevent Buenos Aires from dragging him into the mire of domestic politics. For almost 12 years, Argentines analyzed every message from the Vatican from a local perspective, measuring the breadth of his smile in the face of this or that politician, or the stern gesture that the Jesuit bestowed upon a former president. During his final years, he had to endure Javier Milei , a candidate who campaigned for president by calling him “a representative of evil on earth,” “a son of a bitch who preaches communism” and “a shitty asshole.

” But when that candidate won the elections, there was another miracle turnaround. Milei hadn’t been in office for even two months when he traveled to the Vatican to embrace the man who was now “the most important Argentine in history.” Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition Tu suscripción se está usando en otro dispositivo ¿Quieres añadir otro usuario a tu suscripción? Si continúas leyendo en este dispositivo, no se podrá leer en el otro.

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