The day that Bergoglio was Francisco: March 13, 2013

March 13, 2013

In the afternoon of March 13, 2013, at the announcement of the election of Bergoglio as pope, Cristina de Kirchner directed a presentation on the site of Tecnópolis. They transmitted the data and had a moment of sincerity in front of the small circle that accompanied it: "Is it possible that we have such bad luck to choose Bergoglio as Pope?" One of the witnesses said that he saw her crying. In front of the audience who heard her this afternoon, she was at least mean when she said: "I hope you have an important task and that you will convey the message to the great powers of the world, so that they can talk […] All my wishes for luck and good pastoral mission for all the inhabitants of the world. I know that there are many Argentines who have another religion or who think differently, but none want the world to be better. […] For the first time in the history of the Church, there will be a pope belonging to Latin America. The Cristinista bar whistled to Bergoglio when Cristina mentioned it. With gestures, the president asked for silence.

Eduardo Valdés was one of those responsible for the change of opinion. The former head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs listened, rushed to his computer and wrote him a letter in which he explained how much more practical it was to have an Argentine player global as a world player rather than having an Argentine player. He also blamed her that the young people around her were making fun of Bergoglio. This letter has already been seen by Rafael Bielsa, then director of Aeropuertos Argentina 2000, and Gustavo Beliz, former minister of Kirchner, who had left the country to take up a position in an international organization. Both approved the content.

Cristina, unlike the impious Néstor, was conservative in matters of religious precepts, such as abortion. He raised in front of all popes the same anti-abortion flag as Menem. She practiced, unlike her husband, rites revealing a personal faith. In the rest, he felt free to attack the hierarchies and fit in with the unofficial advisers who made Bergoglio a prime target.

Years later, Cristina would rewrite history. In March 2018, five years after the Pope's inauguration, he told another story, with imaginative changes of time and place: "It was a day like today. remember perfectly, I was doing the curlings, and that's literal.In the morning I had worked at Olivos, in the office of the chief of staff, and now Maru, hairdresser and a brush in his hand, I was combing my hair before going to La Rosada, reading the reports, turning on the television – I was warned that they were going to announce the new pope. screen appears the Vatican's unmissable balcony and a very old cardinal announces in Latin: "Habemus Papam. Giorgio Marius Bergoglio "Take mate with chocolate, I thought.We have a pope.It is Argentinian.And it is Bergoglio.Maru, petrified as a statue, asks me:" Did Bergoglio say ? "" Yes, Maru, "said Bergoglio." I call my secretary and tell him: "Baby, bring the computer and call Olivieri." Guillermo Olivieri, our cult secretary for the past twelve and a half years our administration: "Guille, I send you a letter of congratulations to Bergoglio to send to the Vatican and you will prepare all the protocol and the trip to Rome for the ceremony of his consecration." I wrote this letter that I am I published on the networks the same day and I expressed the wish that his pastoral work be for justice, equality, fraternity and peace Five years after his pontificate, Jorge Bergoglio – who is now Francisco and who smiles – has built, in a monotonous world, the only universal leadership that his voice against neoliberalism, a system that destroys lives and rejects people. This is not a small thing.

Jorge Capitanich, then governor of Chaco, learned of the pope's election in the plane that would take him from Chaco to Buenos Aires, where he was to accompany Cristina. The same day, he sent to the newspaper Ámbito Financiero a column of opinion published a few days later. This marked the line of Bergoglio's approach that later followed the government. Capitanich was one of the friends of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires to the government. He quickly understood the importance for the country to have an Argentine in this position. He also had to perceive the consequences that could have for the government (as for any political force) in the face of the frivolity with this gust of wind that pbaded, by a trick of the dice or thanks to the Holy Spirit, according to the believers, d & # 39; 39, being the most important figure in Argentine national history, of a size equivalent to that of General San Martín in the Creole imaginary.

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Capitanich went to Bergoglio in June 2013 and was one of the first officials to have hosted in Santa Marta. He was governor of Chaco during his second term and, a few months later, he badumed the leadership of the government of Cristina de Kirchner. During this interview, Francisco explained in detail the encyclical he wrote about a project that Benedict XVI left unfinished, with the main theme poverty. Lumen Fidei met a month later. "It will be a four-handed encyclical," said Francisco in a sentence that the press has used extensively to highlight the novelty of this collaboration between the two pontiffs.

Capitanich took part in the private mbad of Santa Marta celebrated by Bergoglio with the bishop emeritus of La Rioja, Fabriciano Sigampa, who had authorized the installation, in the cathedral of the provincial capital, of a fresco in which several sovereigns were represented. Carlos Menem them. After Mbad, Capitanich had breakfast with Sigampa and the Pope in the dining room of Santa Marta.

"I made you prepare a strudel, because you are a Montenegrin, like Monsignor Ognenovich," Francisco told him immediately after sitting down.

"Look, Holy Father," said Capitanich first, "I think Ogñénovich is Croatian, not Montenegrin like me, and we also call apple pie" pita ", not strudel.

They went to the gift tower. The pope received a book on the poverty of Bernardo Kliksberg, expert on the scourge around the world, as well as a pamphlet containing a copy of the column signed by Capitanich on the day of the election.

"I read it," said Francisco.

The same afternoon, when the papal election was announced, chief of staff Juan Manuel Abal Medina was on another planet. He had accepted the invitation of television host Jorge Rial to meet Marcelo Tinelli at home. He wanted to know if the government had criteria on what suited him best. He had to choose between several options for the diffusion of the most successful program of the Argentine television.

He had had offers to continue to be linked to Channel 13, but the other channels had made him offers, some identified with the government, unlike the 13, who had fought in court against the application of the articles of the law on the audiovisual media that had been delayed.

In discussion with the facilitators, Cristal called Abal repeatedly to agree on the terms of the government's statement to greet Francisco's election. Also from Rial's house, Abal Medina sent the text to the official C5N channel asking him to stand out. Abal Medina said the news was not a blow to the government or Cristina, let alone a crisis. "If that had been the case, I would not have been having coffee with Tinelli and Rial."

From this meeting came the relationship between Tinelli and Kirchner's entrepreneur, Cristóbal López, to badociate his interests with the production company Idea del Sur. According to Rial, this was a suggestion from Abal Medina 1, after informing him that the government had no preference for Tinelli's show deal. Likewise, this year the program has not been broadcast. Tinelli took a timely sabbatical year. In October of this year 2013, Sergio Mbada won the legislative elections in the province of Buenos Aires and precipitated the decline of the government of Cristina.

The pontifical elections did not seem to distract the Peronists who joined that week one of the restaurants of the Mayorazgo Hotel in Paraná to close Gestar's anti-violence summit, the internal seal that Néstor Kirchner had created and placed in the hands of José Luis Gioja. , governor of San Juan. They let themselves be carried away by the quarrels of the press which had angrily imagined to hasten Olivos for the election of Bergoglio. This fact has not been mentioned in any of the long speeches made that day. Some participants had however anticipated their joy during the elections. In the case of Capitanich, he did it via his Twitter after remembering a sentence from his favorite novel. In Fisherman's Morris West Sandals, a cardinal told the elected pope (who then starred in Anthony Quinn's movie):

"A long ordeal is waiting for you by the end of your papacy". For Bergoglio, as for the Everyño who held the second position behind Daniel Scioli in the PJ, this image of the pope who sells Vatican goods to the service of the poor has been integrated into his personal imagination.

We went through everything

The exaltation of the spirits that, on March 13, provoked the election of Pope Francisco devastated all the agendas of Argentina2. Until now, the body of Hugo Chávez has remained awake and advertisers have been distracted to know who would inherit their direction. , imagining that he was exercising it beyond Bolivarriato's borders and placing Cristina de Kirchner in this minute scrutiny. Now, they had, Holy Spirit by, the new leader, Jorge Bergoglio, who became, until further notice, the most important figure of Argentina at any time, just because of the height of his chair and beyond what he does or say, or said or done. San Martin level, let's say.

The new pope invited Cristina to the inauguration and distinguished her at a private meeting. He also admitted the request for enlargement of the Argentine delegation and not to be limited to the two companions that the protocol admitted for each presumed president. Bergoglio, at the ceremony of Guillermo Karcher, told Ambbadador Juan Pablo Cafiero that they could join up to twelve companions. This gesture was the prelude to the smoke of Alicia Oliveira, the character who served Bergoglio and the president who signed a truce. He forced Oscar Parrilli to open his office on a Saturday, where he received the lawyer – the favorite friend of Bergoglio since the 1970s – and completed the closing of his incorporation to the trip. This decision was not insignificant, as it was a victory for the Bergoglio government sector, which imposed its vision that, beyond the simple anecdote, the fact that the pope was Argentinian was an opportunity of a immeasurable value.

In the talks between Olivos and Parrilli's office, there were those who were enthusiastic and who said, "Which judge, agency or creditor will now be encouraged to take over from a country that has the pope? Zafamos of everything! "

Sergio Mbada says that he resolved to be a presidential candidate just when he learned that Bergoglio had been elected Pope: "It's a sign, guys. And you have to know how To interpret it. "Jorge O. Reilly traveled the world as Mbada's leader at important meetings, such as those recorded in the launch of WikiLeaks, with accompanying critics reiterated by his boss, behind the back of the Kirchner, denied any possibility of continuing after 2011, and who engaged in insults.This Mbada advisor, attributed to Opus Dei, had received a group of investors from the United States in June 2009 He told them, under the same roof as Cristina de Kirchner, that "Argentina needs legal, regulatory and legislative security." The government has also engaged in "manipulations to short term "and he and Mbada are committed to correcting r these distortions. "

1 Jorge Rial, me, the worst of all, Buenos Aires, Margen del Mundo, 2014. See in particular the second part, chapter 5, "The Pope, Cristina, Cristóbal, Marcelo and me".

2 See the details of the election of the pope, under the Argentine angle, to Mariano De Vedia, Francisco. The pope of the people, Buenos Aires, Planeta, 2013 and In the name of the pope, op. cit. For a global view, Andrea Riccardi, Papa Francesco's surprise: Crisi e futuro della Chiesa, Milan, Mondadori, 2013, and Marco Politi, Francisco among the wolves, op. cit. On the group of European Bishops of St. Gallen and the pontifical elections, Karim Schelkens and Jürgen Mettepenningen, Godfried Danneels: Biography, trans. to the French by Anne-Laure Vignaux, Brussels, Uitgeverij Polis, 2015.

3 Kirchner came to say that he was a monster, a coward and a psychopath.

The Peronist Pope

Ignacio Zuleta

Editorial: Ariel Editorial

Number of pages: 448

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Behind the scenes of politics and bridges between the Vatican State and Argentina.