Pope Francis Whitewashed His Autobiography

Life: My Story Through History was published March 19, 2024. “For the first time, Pope Francis recalls his life through memories and observations of the most significant occurrences of the past eight decades,” the Amazon review noted. “Pope Francis tells the story of his life as he looks back on the momentous world events that have changed history – from his earliest years during the outbreak of World War II in 1939 to the turmoil of today.”

“The book opens with three-year-old Jorge in the kitchen with his mother in Argentina as World War II breaks out, and he goes on to witness several historic events: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the moon landing in 1969 and even the 1986 World Cup in which Maradona scored the unforgettable ‘hand of God’ goal,” the review recapped.

“Here are the frank assessments and intimate insights of a pastor reflecting on the Nazi extermination of the Jews, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 2001 terrorist attack on America and the collapse of the Twin Towers, the great economic recession of 2008, the Covid-19 pandemic, the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI, and the subsequent conclave that elected him Pontiff,” the review summarized.

And oh, by the way, Pope Francis also remembered “Videla’s coup in Argentina.” It is shocking that the most horrific period in Argentine history of brutality, torture and death would be reduced to “Videla’s coup,” especially by someone who survived.

The Dirty War

A military junta led by General Jorge Videla seized power in March 1976. The junta, led by Videla and Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, tortured and killed approximately 30,000 Argentines – anyone even suspected of opposing the regime. This was called the Dirty War because people were captured by the military and killed in secret. “The Nazi influence was very much a part of the Dirty War. Pictures of Hitler hung in torture chambers and the torturers sometimes played Hitler speeches while torturing.”

“The internal enemy was [declared by the junta to be] more dangerous than enemies from abroad because it threatened the fundamental Western and Christian values of Argentine society,” wrote Rita Arditti in Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina.

“Arditti describes the magnitude of the abuses of power that existed at all levels – including within the judicial system and among the highest leaders of the Argentine Catholic Church – as well as detailing the set patterns for the disappearances, tortures, and murders. Fortunately, the vivid descriptions of the tortures (such as torturing children in front of their parents, torturing the fetuses of pregnant women and inciting guard dogs to attack) are mercifully brief.”

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, born in Buenos Aires in 1936, was ordained a priest in 1969. After a short period as novice master, he was appointed provincial of the Argentine Jesuits in 1973, an office he held for six years.

In 1975, Bergoglio gave administration of the Jesuit Universidad del Salvador to leaders of the Iron Guard, “an ultra-catholic, Peronist, right-wing, nationalist organization.” On November 25, 1977, the university awarded an (honorary doctor) degree to Admiral Emilio Massera. This degree is often conferred to recognize a distinguished visitor’s contributions to society. While Bergoglio did not attend the ceremony which included a speech by Massera, as provincial, he still had oversight of this Jesuit institution and the event could not have been held without his approval.

Roberto Pizarro, Dean of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Chile and rector of University Academy of Christian Humanism, thinks it was “inexcusable” for Bergoglio to have honored Massera, head of ESMA where “thousands of young Argentines were tortured and murdered in a reproduction of Auschwitz.” For Bergoglio to have “cultivated a relationship” with Massera is a “stain” on his record for which “Argentines, the Jesuits and the two hundred billion Catholic in the world deserve an explanation.”

On May 14, 1976, seven youths who were doing pastoral/social work in the shantytown of Bajo Flores were kidnapped by Navy commandos. One of them, Monica Maria Candelaria Mignone, was Emilio Mignone’s daughter. All were taken to the dreaded ESMA (School of Naval Mechanics of Argentina) where thousands were tortured and disappeared. None of the seven were ever seen again.

On May 23, 1976, more of their co-workers in Bajo Flores were arrested. The Jesuit priests, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics, along with several youths who worked with them, were taken. The two priests practiced liberation theology, They saw their life mission as alleviating the plight of the poor.

“Liberation theology is a theological approach emphasizing the ‘liberation of the oppressed,’” as defined by Wikipedia. “It engages in socio-economic analyses, with social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples and addresses other forms of perceived inequality.”

Yorio and Jalics were also in ESMA but released five months later. They had been beaten, drugged and left in a suburb of Buenos Aires.

Based on ten years of all-consuming investigations into his daughter’s disappearance, Mignone’s book, Church and Dictatorship: The Role of the Church in Light of Its Relations with the Military was published in 1986 when Bergoglio was mostly unknown outside of Argentina. The following is from articles  here, here and here.

According to Mignone, during a meeting with the military junta in 1976, then president of the Argentine Bishops’ Conference and military chaplain, Archbishop Adolfo Servando Tortolo, agreed that before a priest was arrested, the military would warn his respective bishop. “On some occasions the green light was given by the same bishops” to act against some priests, Mignone wrote.

“A week before [Yorio and Jalics’] arrest, Archbishop Juan Carlos Aramburu had withdrawn their ministerial licenses without reason or explanation. Because of various expressions heard by Yorio in captivity, it was clear to him that the Navy interpreted Aramburu’s decision and some criticism from his provincial, Jorge Bergoglio, as an authorization to take action against him. Most certainly, the military had warned both Aramburu and Bergoglio of the supposed danger that Yorio posed.”

Mignone thought Bergoglio’s criticism “served as part of the basis for the arrest, imprisonment and torture of the Jesuit priests.” Mignone wonders “what will history say of these shepherds who delivered their sheep to the enemy without defending them or rescuing them.”

“Two bishops, more than a hundred priests, religious and seminarians, thousands of committed Christians fell. But there was no collective pastoral bishops condemning the persecution or the excommunication of those responsible. This was a curious spectacle. Bishops who shared favors with a regime that terrorized and massacred their priests and faithful!” Mignone wrote. “The majority of the Argentine Catholic hierarchy collaborated by action or omission, with the Argentine military junta.”

Bergoglio was appointed auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires by Pope John Paul II.

Bergoglio biographer Paul Vallely (Pope Francis: Untying the Knots – August 2013), wrote that “After his time as provincial, Fr. Bergoglio taught theology and was rector of the Jesuit seminary in Buenos Aires. He introduced lifestyle changes and theology and liturgy materials that put the school back to pre-Vatican II ways and out of step with Jesuit life and studies in the rest of Latin America. Continuing to act as if he had the power even after his terms of office were over, he was shipped far away (400 miles) to Cordoba (1985) and then to doctoral studies in Germany (1986-89).”

Pope John Paul II had been elected in 1978 “as right-wing ‘death squads’ were gaining momentum across Latin America. He offered little protection to left-leaning priests and nuns who were targeted. He rebuffed Archbishop Romero’s plea to condemn El Salvador’s right-wing regime and its human rights violations. He stood by as priests were butchered and nuns were raped and killed, instead of leading the charge for real economic and political change in Latin America.”

John Paul II directed his Church’s resources, including his travel itinerary and personal appearances, in support of the “anti-communist” Latin American dictators/butchers of hundreds of thousands.

John Paul II went to Argentina in 1982. In Buenos Aires on June 10, he refused to meet with any human rights groups or leaders and never apologized for his Church’s complicity in the barbarity.

“He also elevated clerics like Bergoglio who didn’t protest right-wing repression.”

In 1992, Bergoglio was appointed auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires by Pope John Paul II.

Pope Francis’ official Vatican biography states, “It was Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, who wanted Fr. Bergoglio as a close collaborator.”
Years later, Bergoglio said “his greatest intellectual influence and the bridge by which he came to Quarracino” was the Uruguayan historian, philosopher and theologian Alberto Methol Ferre. Methol had referred to the exponents of liberation theology as “solemn jackasses.”

By the mid-1980s, Quarracino had become the “visible head of the conservative sector of the Church” in Argentina. He was appointed archbishop of La Plata in 1985 and five years later took office in Buenos Aires.

“In the political world he was considered close to President Menem.”  Like Menem, Quarracino supported an end to all investigations of the crimes of the Dirty War.

Pres. Carlos Menem

Carlos Menem, president of Argentina from 1989-99, “cultivated a strong relationship with the Vatican during his ten years in office. He made strenuous efforts to strengthen that link.” (also here)

Menem “decisively influenced” Quarracino’s elevation to cardinal in 1990. The president boasted that he discussed “all the leaders of the Church” with Pope John Paul II.

Menem “pardoned every war criminal who had been convicted and many who were facing trial.” That included General Jorge Videla and Admiral Emilio Massera who “were sentenced in 1985 to life in prison for killings, tortures and illegal arrests while the military was in power.”  Menem claimed he had consulted with Pope John Paul II before pardoning the leaders and the pope had told him it would help “the pacification of Argentina.”

After leaving office, Menem “was convicted at different trials for embezzlement, corruption, and arms smuggling.”

Bergoglio appointed Archbishop of Buenos Aires by Pope John Paul II.

When a pope wants to guarantee his choice of successor to an (arch)bishop, he appoints a “coadjutor” bishop who has the right of succession upon the death or removal of the head of the (arch)diocese. Quarracino was ill and Bergoglio was appointed by Pope John Paul II as coadjutor in 1997.

Three other Argentine prelates had been mentioned as probable successors to Quarracino. “[But] from a closer perspective to the political assessments, in the appointment of Bergoglio, Pope John Paul II produced a gesture of full support for Quarracino in whom is embodied a doctrinaire vision closer to traditional Catholic thought.”

Quarraccino died on February 28, 1998, and Bergoglio became archbishop of Buenos Aires, primate of all Argentina, and was elevated to cardinal in February 2001 by John Paul II.

Pres. Nestor Kirchner and Christiana Fernandez

Nestor Kirchner was elected president in 2003. He was succeeded by his wife, Cristina Fernandez in 2007. Nestor died suddenly in October of 2010. Cristina stood for reelection in 2011 and won. By law, she could not run again in 2015.

Like his American confreres who used “moral issues” to oppose progressive government, Bergoglio “clashed with the Kirchner administration sharply over issues of abortion, contraception and sex education.”  Kirchner called Bergoglio the “spiritual head of the political opposition” and also “castigated the Church for its willingness to accommodate the military regime during the 1970s and early 1980s.”

Fernandez’ relationship with Bergoglio was “strained due to her support for same-sex marriage and the leftism of her administration.”

In 2012, when the Fernandez administration “pushed for mandatory sex education in schools, free distribution of contraceptives in public hospitals, and the right for transsexuals to change their official identities on demand,” Bergoglio accused the president of “demagoguery, totalitarianism, corruption and efforts to secure unlimited power.”

Bergoglio’s 2010 Testimony

“When Néstor Kirchner was elected president in 2003, he revoked a previous government’s amnesty for officials from the dictatorship, and began prosecuting long dormant human-rights cases.” As a result, by 2010 “slightly more than 50 convictions” had occurred.

The following took place during the criminal trials of eighteen officers who had worked at ESMA.

November 8, 2010, Argentina Idependent: “Attorney Luis Zamora requested Cardinal Bergoglio’s statement after testimony before the court on 23rd September by María Elena Funes, a former detainee of ESMA [and one of the workers kidnapped with Yorio and Jalics]. Her statement informed the court that [Yorio and Jalics] were abducted on 20th May 1976 after Bergoglio removed their religious licenses to preach in Bajo Flores as well as their protectio.”

Sam Ferguson, a visiting fellow at the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School and a former Fulbright Scholar, summarized Bergoglio’s testimony in an article in The New Republic.

“Bergoglio, who was not a defendant in the case, insisted on clerical testimonial privilege and did not testify in open court; proceedings were held in his office….Bergoglio’s 2010 testimony offers his take on events.

“Bergoglio testified at trial that ‘every priest that worked with the poor was a target for suspicion and accusation from some sectors,’ but as a ‘Jesuit brother’ of the priests, he wanted to do what he could to help them ‘continue working.’

“Bergoglio was also questioned about allegations that Yorio’s ministerial license had been revoked several days before the kidnapping, an alleged signal to the military that the priests were fair game. He disputed this account, saying, ‘I don’t believe that their licenses were suspended.’

“Bergoglio recounted during his testimony the steps he took to ensure Yorio and Jalics’ releases. He testified that he ‘began to move immediately’…. He said he began to ‘speak with priests that I assumed had access to the police and the armed forces,’ to find out which service branch kidnapped the priests. He met twice with Jorge Rafael Videla, the Army dictator. He also met twice with Emilio Massera, the commander in chief of the Navy. But after the meeting Bergoglio said he discovered through back channels that the Navy had, in fact, kidnapped the priests. (He did not specify who gave him this information, only that it was ‘vox populi.’) [During] the second meeting with Massera, he remembered saying, ‘look Massera, I want them to appear.’ Then, he testified, ‘I got up, and I left.’

In addition to Emilio Mignone’s book and Maria Elena Funes’ testimony, “Yorio’s assertion that he blamed Bergoglio had, in fact, been on the record for several years. ‘I don’t have any reason to think that [Bergoglio] did anything for our freedom,’ he told journalist Horacio Verbitsky in a 1999 interview for the book El Silencio.

“Yorio accused Bergoglio of lobbying Argentina’s bishops to stay away from him and Jalics. He also said he thought Bergoglio talked with Massera who had informed him that Yorio and Jalics were guerilla leaders. This, according to Yorio, allowed Bergoglio to ‘wash his hands’ of concern for the priests. ‘He didn’t wait for me to come out alive,’ Yorio said.” Unlike Yorio, Jalics remained a Jesuit. “He lives in Germany and does not talk about his experience as a victim of Argentina’s repression. He did not respond to an email request for comment.)

“When Yorio and Jalics were eventually freed (unlike thousands of other victims who were murdered by incineration, or thrown alive from military airplanes), Bergoglio told the court that he helped ensure the priests’ physical safety and arranged for them to leave the country. Bergoglio admitted that he did not file any judicial charges, nor did he make any public statements about Yorio and Jalics. But when asked by one of the three presiding judges if Yorio or Jalics ever told him what they thought about his behavior during their kidnapping, he replied that, in personal conversations, ‘neither one of them asked me what more I could have done. … They didn’t blame me.’”

November 9, 2010, La Nacion: “The cardinal could not justify why those two priests were left in a situation of abandonment and exposed,” said the lawyer and former leftist congressman, Luis Zamora. Zamora, insisted that Bergoglio’s testimony “demonstrates the role of the Church during the last military dictatorship.”

Bergoglio’s 2010 Testimony

The second time Bergoglio was asked to testify was by the sixth Federal Court (TOF 6) on September 26, 2011, about the junta’s “systematic plan of appropriation of children of the disappeared.”

“Pregnant prisoners were kept alive until they gave birth and then murdered. At least 500 newborns were taken from their parents while in captivity and given to military couples to raise as their own. By 1983, hundreds of these ‘adoptions’ were coming to light.”

“The method used in Argentina was especially perverse: waiting for the mother to give birth, then taking the baby from her, torturing her, killing her and making her disappear,” Baltasar Garzón, a former Spanish judge and human rights activist told The Guardian. “More than 30% of prisoners during Videla’s dictatorship were women. Female prisoners, including pregnant women, were sexually abused and gang-raped.”

During his testimony, Bergoglio was specifically asked about the case of Elena de la Cuadra, who was abducted and detained at ESMA. Again, Bergoglio received the privilege of being able to testify from his own office. According to the de la Cuadra family who lost five relatives during the Dirty War, when the five-month pregnant Elena was kidnapped in 1977, they wrote the Jesuit Superior General, Pedro Arrupe, for assistance.  Arrupe asked Bergoglio to help them.

In 1977, Elena’s father twice went to see Bergoglio who referred him to the Archbishop of La Plata, Mario Picchi. “Months passed before the [archbishop] came back with a written note from a colonel: It revealed that the woman had given birth in captivity to a girl who was given to a family ‘too important’ for the adoption to be reversed.” Elena was never seen again.

Part of the testimony is as follows (I Investigator, B Bergoglio):
I – When did you learn that children were being confiscated during the dictatorship?
B – Recently … Ah, recently, some ten years ago.
I – Would that be around the year 199X?? [sic]
B – Maybe sometime around the time of the Trial of the Juntas.
I – A bit earlier then.
B – A bit earlier. Around that time, more or less, I started to find out about that.
I – We have talked at various times about documentation that could or could not be provided to the proceedings (trial/tribunal). I would like to conclude by asking that we come to an agreement on the manner in which the tribunal can gain access to this valuable documentation, as it is public knowledge and widely known that the Church has much of the documentation. This is apparent in record of evidence given in various testimonies, including testimonies that have been heard here in this trial. So, before finishing this hearing, we need to come to an agreement and a determination of the most expeditious manner by which the tribunal can gain access to all of that valuable archival documentation.

(In 1995 Uki Goñi wrote an article for the group Desaparecidos en Argentina titled “Role of Vatican in Argentina’s Dirty War.” “The Vatican Embassy in Argentina kept a secret list of thousands of people who disappeared during Argentina’s Dirty War which it failed to make public at the time.”

“Italian Cardinal Pio Laghi, who was Papal Pro-Nuncio in Buenos Aires during the time of the military dictatorship – and who later served as John Paul II’s Pro-Nuncio in the United States – has openly admitted to the Argentine press that he had knowledge of some 6,000 cases of people who ‘disappeared.’ Pio Laghi’s admission – in an interview published by Gente magazine in Argentina – came only after press reports in early 1995 that his own office and the Catholic Church in Argentina kept secret lists of part of the 30,000 people who are believed to have died at the hands of the dictatorship of General Jorge Rafael Videla. Other relatives of missing people have stated that Pio Laghi kept precise information on the fate of the ‘disappeared.’”) 

President [of the Tribunal]- Ask for it, Doctor.
I – I’m wondering if there will be an agreed upon way we can find and get to see this documentation.
President – So the question is whether the gentleman testifying will permit a review of the [Church] files.
B -Yes, I have no problem with that. I will instruct the custodians of the archives to do so. In fact, we have received documentation requests regarding other trials on the same topic, and we sent what we had, whatever we had.

You can read Bergoglio’s testimony in Spanish here.

According to one observer, Bergoglio responded with “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember” to the majority of the 33 questions. Asked if he had met with Elena de la Cuadra’s family, he said, “I have no knowledge, but it is likely that this happened.” His response that he only knew about the stolen babies “around the time of the Trial of Juntas” (1986) was “surprising” because the Mothers (now Grandmothers) of the Plaza de Mayo have been active since 1977.

“Their first demonstration was on April 30, 1977. On that Saturday the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (Madres de Plaza de Mayo in Spanish) first got together at the square which would give them their name. Since then, they have returned demanding to know the fate of their disappeared children 2,392 times,” the Buenos Aires Herald reported. “Once a week, come rain or shine, a group of Mothers gathered. They wear white handkerchiefs tied to their heads, with names sewn onto them.” 

Elena’s mother, Alicia, became one of the first Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Bergoglio was elected pope on March 13, 2013

Ivone Gebara, a Brazilian sister and a leading theologian in the fields of ecofeminism and liberation theology, wrote an article in response: “The Geopolitics of Secrecy: Reflections on the Election of Pope Francis.”  It was published by the British Latin American Bureau on April 2, 2013.

“The Catholic press says nothing about many people’s suspicions regarding his role during Argentina’s recent military dictatorship, or about his current political stands against gay marriage and the legalization of abortion. Neither do they mention his well-known criticism of liberation theology or his lack of interest in feminist theology.

“The telecommunication industry repeats that Pope Francis uses public transportation, that he is close to the poor, that he cooks his own meals and that the name he has chosen as pope shows his similarity to the great saint of Assisi. He was immediately tagged as a simple man, cordial and friendly. 

“To go out into the streets and give food to the poor and pray with prisoners is somewhat humanitarian, but it does not solve the problem of social exclusion that afflicts many of the world’s countries.

“We are liable to be impressed by a public gesture of affection or likeability without asking questions about the real history of this person.  We don’t ask questions about his actions in the past, here and now, or what he’s likely to do in the future.”

Although he had testified in 2011 that “I have no problem” with releasing the Church files and that “I will instruct the custodians of the archives to do so,” it wasn’t until October 2016 that, “following the authorization and recommendations of Pope Francis, the Argentine Church’s archives pertaining to the Dirty War will be made available for review,” as reported by the National Catholic Register. However, “only those who were victims, immediate family members of the disappeared or detained and, in the case of religious or clerics, only their major superiors were allowed to have access to the materials.” The archives have never been available to the public or the press.

In fact, even before Bergoglio’s election as pope, it had already been reported on March 16, 2012, that the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, “who had campaigned for decades” to find those children stolen by the military junta, “in collaboration with some scientists in the United States formed the National Bank of Genetic Data. Families who think they have had grandchildren stolen from their murdered children, deposit their blood. It’s a DNA bank.” Now, that “DNA is being used to identify Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’ orphans” as stated in a broadcast by NPR.

The Associated Press reported in March 2024 that 133 “recovered grandchildren” had already been identified “through the National Commission for the Right to Identity (known for its Spanish initials, CONADI) and the National Genetic Data Bank.”

Pope Francis and the sexual torture of Argentine children

Since his election, Pope Francis has visited 60 countries including six trips to Latin America. In 2024, the pontiff will travel September 2-13 to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, and Singapore and September 26-29 to Luxembourg and Belgium.

Pope Francis has never returned to Argentina.

It is not only because of his cooperation with the barbaric junta during the Dirty War, his less than honest testimonies in 2010 and 201, his refusal to open Church archives to the public, but also his shameful record regarding the sexual torture of Argentine children.

“Jorge Mario Bergoglio was archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1998 to 2013 and president of the Argentine bishops’ conference from 2005 to 2011. During these years, as church officials in the US and Europe began addressing the catastrophe of child sexual abuse by clergy – and even as Popes John Paul II and Benedict made public statements – Bergoglio stayed silent about the crisis in Argentina,” noted the BishopAccountability.org website.

“He released no documents, no names of accused priests, no tallies of accused priests, no policy for handling abuse, not even an apology to victims.

“In On Heaven and Earth (first published in Spanish in 2010), a wide-ranging collection of conversations with Argentine rabbi Abraham Skorka, he suggested in fact that the problem did not exist in his archdiocese:

In my diocese it never happened to me, but a bishop called me once by phone to ask me what to do in a situation like this and I told him to take away the priest’s faculties, not to permit him to exercise his priestly ministry again, and to initiate a canonical trial.

“In the high-profile cases of four child molesters from religious orders or other dioceses – Fr. Julio César Grassi, Fr. Rubén Pardo, Brother Fernando Enrique Picciochi, S.M., Rev. Mario Napoleon Sasso – there is evidence that Bergoglio knowingly or unwittingly slowed victims in their fight to expose and prosecute their assailants. Victims of all four offenders say that they sought the cardinal’s help. None of them received it, even those who were poor, struggling on the periphery of society – the people whom Pope Francis has championed. (According to Bergoglio’s former spokesman, the cardinal declined to meet with victims.)

Most notable was the case of Fr. Julio César Grassi. “Grassi was convicted in 2009 of molesting a boy who had lived in a home for street children that Grassi founded. After Grassi’s conviction, Bergoglio commissioned a secret study to persuade Supreme Court judges of Grassi’s innocence. Bergoglio’s intervention is believed to be at least part of the reason that Grassi remained free for more than four years following his conviction. He finally was sent to jail in September 2013. See our detailed summary of the Grassi case with links to articles,” on the BishopAccountability.org website.

Pope Francis will never return to Argentina.

Life: My Story Through History is praised as “an extraordinary personal and historical journey,” by the book’s publisher, Harper Collins Publishers. “The pope recounts these world-changing moments with the candor and compassion that distinguishes him,” they state.

No doubt, Sr. Gebara’s “telecommunication industry” will repeat this opinion, but the people of Argentina know better.

Betty Clermont is author of The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America (2009).