Saved by Francisco: how is the book on the performance of the pope during the dictatorship

You took us in your car to San Miguel. You asked me to try to hide and not look at the path we were going to make. I thought, "Has this dressing become aware of the risk to which it is exposed?" Then I did not know you were the provincial of the Jesuits. In San Miguel, you told me to remove the alliance and pretend that I was doing a spiritual retreat as if I were going to enter the company. […].

One morning you called me to your office. You were with my brother and you wrote us the plan we were going to follow. You drove us to the airport by car and you accompanied us until the last moment. The airport was one of those key points controlled by the army and plainclothes policemen. We pbaded the controls and nothing happened. […]. We flew to Iguazú and we walked to the border without taking a taxi or bus, as you had suggested. We waited for the last ship, that of the smugglers, where the military controls were a little relaxed. We are going to Brazil and take a bus to Rio de Janeiro. There, I said goodbye to my brother, Juan, who accompanied me during all these difficult times. At the time, I fled to the United Nations and flew to Germany where I was granted political asylum …

A few days ago, I was with friends and the cell phone rang. It's my brother who shouted at me from the other side: "Gonzalo, did you hear about it? They named Bergoglio Pope!" But almost at the same time, news began to appear in the newspapers, in radio broadcasts, where you were accused of collaborating with the dictatorship, betraying two Jesuits, and so on. I then called my brothers for them to come home for dinner and I told them I was going to talk to the press and tell everything you had done for me. In interviews, I've always focused on the lucidity and value that you had not only personally, but also institutionally, when I was running those risks for myself, that I was stranger. […] You asked us to pray for you on the day of your inauguration. I ask God in this life that you now begin to have the same clarity, courage, and commitment you had thirty-six years ago in such difficult circumstances. I was looking forward to giving you a hug and thank you.

P. D. I never thought I was going to write a letter to the pope

The story of Gonzalo surprises and motivates reflection. If we did not know that it was Jorge Bergoglio, we could imagine that the one who helped him was an experienced revolutionary militant. The security measures and the evacuation plan do not match those of a person who offers his support to someone for the first time. He begins by taking him "tabicado" (lowering his eyes to not know where he is led), performs maneuvers "against-prosecution", the cache on the third floor of the Colegio Máximo de San Miguel, details the plan of action. evacuation to the point of suggesting the last ship smugglers or "bagayeros" and, finally, exposes it completely to accompany him to catch the plane while the airports were a home of police and " tags. " It means that eThe young Jorge Bergoglio was not an improviser, but he had some experience and some expertise in protection and escape. And he used the instruments at his disposal to save many lives. The seminarians, priests and students close to the Argentine Jesuit world have managed to survive thanks to the courage of this priest.

In every moment of history, men occupy a place from which they have more or less opportunities to manage their context. This is why it is misleading to transfer the current Pope Francis, formerly Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, to the years of dictatorship without first describing this context. This would lead to the grave mistake of confusing the role of a superior of the Jesuit order with the more hierarchical levels of the Argentine Catholic Church.

Bergoglio had no political militancy in the seventies. But for the role of responsibility he had to play since 1973 as Superior of the Society of Jesus, The tragedy touched him very closely and made him one more survivor.

However, as of Wednesday, March 13, 2013, he was simply sitting on the accused's bench. It was 3:15 pm when, from the Sistine Chapel to the Vatican, there appeared a white smoke that indicated that the cardinals had chosen a new pope. Then protodiácono Jean-Louis Tauran announced: "Habemus Papam".

It is the Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio who will adopt the name of Francisco. He was the first Latin American and Jesuit Pope in history. In Argentina, the word to describe the moment was "surprise". It was that even the most seasoned badysts had not given Bergoglio any chance. In a football country, a renowned TV journalist even said: "Bergoglio is less likely to be pope than me to be Boca." Immediately, the tumult has shifted to the political sphere. The President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, then issued a brief statement: "On my behalf, on behalf of the Government of Argentina and on behalf of the people of our country, I wish to salute you and to congratulate you on the occasion. of this election of the new Roman pontiff of the universal Church, extend my consideration and respect to His Holiness. "Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa tweeted:" We have a Latin American pope! live unprecedented historical moments! Long live Francisco! " For her part, Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil, said: "On behalf of the Brazilian people, I congratulate the new Pope Francis I and greet the Catholic Church and the Argentine people". Even opposition MP Elisa Carrió celebrated the news: "It's the biggest sign of the time, it's a party."

However, the nearest diary of Kirchnerism, Página / 12, entitled "Dios mio!", Also stated: "The high prelate was denounced for complicity with the military dictatorship, he maintained a conflictual relationship with the Kirchner governments were a staunch opponent of equality in marriage, bad education and reproductive health. "The world press eagerly sought Argentine information links to search for information on the profile of the unknown cardinal who became pope. And given the doubts raised by some local media, it will not be long to look into the role of Jorge Bergoglio during the military dictatorship..

Less known are the critics that he has received from ultra-conservative sectors of the Church itself. Antonio Caponnetto, director of Cabildo Catholic Right magazine, has for many years considered Bergoglio "a collaborator of international Marxism". Already in May 2010 he commented on the book The Jesuit, by Sergio Rubin and Francesca Ambrogetti, appeared on this date: These are pages without loss to measure the bottom of the sin and servile fear to which this unfortunate happened. His desire to collaborate with Marxism reaches its peak here. […] During these years, the Argentine homeland was the target of a declared war led and funded by Marxist internationalism as part of the overall program of the War of Independence. In this struggle, Bergoglio was on the side of the enemies of God and of the fatherland. […] Excited by the many services rendered by his friend, Father Jorge, to the cause [la abogada Alicia] Oliveira recalls that he not only put the Colegio Máximo at the service of the left – handed concealment, but from the same University of El Salvador, because "many of us have gone to live there. over there". In fact, she dictated the criminal law with Eugenio Zaffaroni.

As you can see, if from the left he was accused of collaborating with the dictatorship, from the right (with much less press) he was accused of exactly the opposite. If Bergoglio was today a retired priest and lived in the old house of Flores district in Buenos Aires, as his plan intended, it would be one more story among the thousands. of people who have lived through these difficult years. But he became Francisco, the great reformer of the Church.

Neither Jorge nor this Francisco deserves to be over and over again shaking the dark shadows of his past, shadows that have managed to confuse even the sectors that today coincide almost totally with his thought and its action.. As Bergoglio himself wrote in 2010 On the sky and the earth, co-author with Rabbi Abraham Skorka: "A historical badysis must always be done according to the guidelines of the time, with its hermeneutics, not to justify the facts, but to understand them". While many of his Argentine and foreign biographers have addressed the subject of his years as a Jesuit provincial and their role in the 1970s, there is no comprehensive research on this scene that can show another vision and balance the Floods of ink thrown disqualify Jorge Bergoglio. It is time to try to correct the error.

The text is the prologue of the new book "Saved by Francisco, How could a young priest get help from the dictatorship", by Aldo Duzdevich (Ediciones B)