Le nouveau pape François 1er est élu mais la papauté est loin d’être sauvée... Tant mieux : qu’elle crève ! Ce pilier de la réaction mondiale, hostile aux droits des femmes, aux travailleurs, aux droits sociaux, haut lieu de tous les complots fascistes, pilier de l’homophobie, réseau pédophile mondial, réseau de la finance véreuse mondiale, véritable verrue sur le monde issue d’un passé hideux, n’a qu’à tomber...

Bergoglio was ordained in 1969, and served as the Jesuit Provincial (elected leader of the order) for Argentina between 1973 and 1979, before becoming rector of the Philosophical and Theological Faculty of San Miguel between 1980 and 1986. In the 1990s he began to be promoted up the Church hierarchy by Pope John Paul II.

Under the junta rule, Bergoglio worked to enforce within his Jesuit order the Vatican’s edicts against “liberation theology”. This movement had been founded by reformist elements within the Latin American church in the 1960s, seeking to focus on the plight of the poor as a means of maintaining the Church’s position amid a political radicalisation of the working class across the continent.

In 1976, Bergoglio demanded that two Jesuit priests—Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics—cease preaching liberation theology and leave the slums where they were working. After they refused, Bergoglio had them removed from the order. The two men were subsequently kidnapped and tortured by the military. According to Associated Press : “Yorio accused Bergoglio of effectively handing them over to the death squads by declining to tell the regime that he endorsed their work.”

Argentinian journalist Horacio Verbitsky wrote a book in 2005 covering the affair, El Silencio : de Paulo VI a Bergoglio : las relaciones secretas de la Iglesia con la ESMA. “He put the safety of the [Jesuit] Society of Jesus above the safety of the priests,” Verbitsky alleged.

The case was brought before the Argentinian courts by a human rights lawyer in 2005, but remains unresolved. Bergoglio has denied the allegations, accusing Verbitsky of “slander”. He maintains that he intervened privately with the junta on behalf of the two priests after their detention, and secured their release.

Bergoglio was called to testify in the case after a Catholic lay worker, María Elena Funes, who was imprisoned at the infamous ESMA (navy mechanics) torture center, testified in relation to the disappearance of the French nuns Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet and said that the two priests had been abducted by the military after Bergoglio took away their protection.

Luis Zamora, the former national deputy and lawyer in the case, described Bergoglio’s testimony as “reticent,” adding, “When someone is reticent, they are lying, they are hiding part of the truth.”

In another episode, Bergoglio has been accused of ignoring the pleas for help from a family that lost five of its members to the junta, including a young woman who was five months pregnant before she was kidnapped and killed in 1977. Bergoglio allegedly assigned a junior colleague to the case, who was subsequently given a note from a colonel explaining that the young woman had given birth while in detention and that the baby had been given to an “important” family. Despite his involvement in this case, Bergoglio testified in 2010 that he did not know about stolen babies until after the fall of the dictatorship.

After the end of military rule, now Pope Francis worked to shield the criminals within the armed forces. In 2006 he endorsed a public protest organised by ex-military and right-wing forces demanding blanket immunity from prosecution for crimes committed during the junta. In 2012, responding to growing disgust among ordinary Argentineans, Bergoglio issued a statement on behalf of the country’s bishops formally apologising for the Church’s “failures” during the “dirty war”—while at the same time placing equal blame for the violence on the military dictatorship and its left-wing opponents.

“History condemns him,” Reuters reported Fortunato Mallimacci, the former dean of social sciences at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, as saying. “It shows him to be opposed to all innovation in the church and above all, during the dictatorship, it shows he was very cosy with the military.”

Patrick O’Connor WSWS