The Wall
Street Journal
March 18,
2013
By Mary
Anastasia O'Grady
Argentines celebrated last week when one of their own was
chosen as the new pope. But they also suffered a loss of sorts. Cardinal Jorge
Mario Bergoglio, a tireless advocate of the poor and outspoken critic of
corruption, will no longer be on hand locally to push back against the
malfeasance of the government of President Cristina Kirchner.
Argentines not aligned with the regime hope that the arrival
of Francis on the world stage at least will draw attention to this issue.
Heaven knows the situation is growing dire.
One might have expected a swell of pride from Argentine officialdom
when the news broke that the nation has produced a man so highly esteemed
around the world. Instead the Kirchner government's pit bulls in journalism—men
such as Horacio Verbitsky, a former member of the guerrilla group known as the
Montoneros and now an editor at the pro-government newspaper Pagina
12—immediately began a campaign to smear the new pontiff's character and
reputation at home and in the international news media.
The calumny is not new. Former members of terrorist groups
like Mr. Verbitsky, and their modern-day fellow travelers in the Argentine
government, have used the same tactics for years to try to destroy their
enemies—anyone who doesn't endorse their brand of authoritarianism. In this
case they allege that as the Jesuits' provincial superior in Argentina in the
late 1970s, then-Father Bergoglio had links to the military government.
This is propaganda. Mrs. Kirchner and her friends aren't yet
living in the equivalent of a totalitarian state where there is no free press
to counter their lies. That day may come soon. The government is now pressuring
merchants, under threat of reprisals, not to buy advertising in newspapers. The
only newspapers that aren't on track to be financially ruined by this
intimidation are those that the government controls and finances through
official advertising, like Mr. Verbitsky's Pagina 12. Argentines refer to the
paper as "the official gazette" because it so reliably prints the
government's line.
Intellectually honest observers with firsthand knowledge of
Argentina under military rule (1976-1983) are telling a much different story
than the one pushed by Mr. Verbitsky and his ilk. One of those observers is
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, winner of the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize. Last week he told
BBC Mundo that "there were bishops that were complicit with the
dictatorship, but Bergoglio, no." As to the charge that the priest didn't
do enough to free junta prisoners, Mr. Pérez Esquivel said: "I know
personally that many bishops who asked the military government for the
liberation of prisoners and priests and it was not granted."
Former Judge Alicia Oliveira, who was herself fired by the
military government and forced into hiding to avoid arrest, told the Argentine
newspaper Perfil last week that during those dark days she knew Father
Bergoglio well and that "he helped many people get out of the
country." In one case, she says there was a young man on the run who
happened to look like the Jesuit. "He gave him his identification card and
his [clergy attire] so that he could escape."
Ms. Oliveira also told Perfil that when she was in hiding at
the home of the current minister of security, Nilda Garré, the two of them
"ate with Bergoglio." As Ms. Oliveira pointed out, Ms. Garré
"therefore knows all that he did."
Graciela Fernández Meijide, a human-rights activist and
former member of the national commission on the disappearance of persons, told
the Argentine press last week that "of all the testimony I received, never
did I receive any testimony that Bergoglio was connected to the
dictatorship."
None of this matters to those trying to turn Argentina into
the next Venezuela. What embitters them is that Father Bergoglio believed that
Marxism (and the related "liberation theology") was antithetical to
Christianity and refused to embrace it in the 1970s. That put him in the way of
those inside the Jesuit order at the time who believed in revolution. It also
put him at odds with the Montoneros, who were maiming, kidnapping and killing
civilians in order to terrorize the population. Many of those criminals are
still around and hold fast to their revolutionary dreams.
For them, the new pope remains a meddlesome priest. In the
slums where the populist Mrs. Kirchner claims to be a champion of the poor,
Francis is truly beloved because he lives the gospel. From the pulpit, with the
Kirchners in the pews, he famously complained of self-absorbed politicians. He
didn't name names, but the shoe fit. Nestór Kirchner, the late president and
Cristina's husband, responded by naming him "the head of the
opposition."
As Ms. Fernández Meijide observed last week, "I have
the impression that what bothers the current president is that Bergoglio would
not get in line, that he denounces the continuation of extreme poverty."
That's not the regime's approved narrative.
1 comment:
I thank God for this Pope. He is a man of the times. I believe he'll bring light to the current situation in Argentina...just like Pope John Paul II did to communism. I pray for our new Holy Father. Thank you. ~Amy
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