The report proved prescient. Priests formed left-wing organizations in seven countries, some doing so in open support of coups against democratic governments, as in Chile and Bolivia. In several dioceses ugly clashes erupted between priests and bishops. Thirty diocesan priests in Mexico demanded the resignation of Bishop Leonardo Viera Contreras, and in Maracaibo, Venezuela, twenty-two pastors called on Archbishop Domingo Roa Pérez to resign. Several hundred priests and laymen petitioned the Guatemalan Congress to expel Archbishop Mario Casariego, cardinal of Guatemala City. In Argentina a group of priests from Cordoba and Rosario demanded the dismissal of Bishop Victorio Bonamín, chief military chaplain. Similarly, activist priests in Rio de Janeiro and Peru insisted on their right to elect the local archbishop, while Chile's left-wing religious movement, Christians for Socialism, attacked Santiago's Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez.23
Pope Paul VI was at his wit's end. After trying to appease the leftists with a series of social justice encyclicals and pronouncements, he realized that the only way he could reassert his papal authority was by force. Such force, of course, could not be overt. It could only be unleashed by Catholic organizations, including Opus Dei and Catholic Action, working in tandem with the Nixon Administration and the CIA.
CATHOLIC CONDOR
Operation Condor, a program intended to eradicate Communist groups and movements throughout South America, got underway in the early 1970s, when Opus Dei elicited support from Chilean bishops for the overthrow of the democratically elected government of president Salvador Allende. The Catholic group began to work closely with CIA-funded organizations such as the Fatherland and Liberty, which subsequently became the dreaded Chilean secret police. In 1971, the CIA began shelling out millions to the Chilean Institute for General Studies (IGS), an Opus Dei think tank, for the planning of the revolution. IGS members included lawyers, free-market economists, and executives from influential publications, such as Hernán Cubillos, founder of Qué Pasa, an Opus Dei magazine, and publisher of El Mercurio, the largest newspaper in Santiago (and one that was subsidized by the CIA). After the coup, a number of IGS technocrats became cabinet members and advisors to the ruling military junta, and Cubillos came to serve as Chile's new foreign minister.24 Immediately upon seizing control of the presidency, General Agusto Pinochet rounded up thousands of alleged Communists in the national stadium for execution.25
“GOD WILL PARDON ME”
The full fathom of the Vatican's involvement in Condor has never been sounded. But every phase of the operation, including the purging of the left-wing clerics, received the tacit approval of the pope. Leaders of the military juntas, including General Pinochet, were devout Catholics. Indeed, when Pinochet was taken into custody in England for the murder of thousands of Chileans in 1998, he was mystified by the charges. His bafflement was justifiable. When Pinochet initiated his pogrom, Archbishop Alfonso López Trujillo, general secretary of the Latin American Episcopal Conference, said, “The military junta came into existence as a response to social and economic chaos. No society can admit a power vacuum. Faced with tensions and disorders, an appeal to power is inevitable.”26 Following Pinochet's arrest, Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Angelo Sodano, on behalf of the Holy Father, sent a letter to the British government demanding the general's release.27
When General Pinochet finally went on trial in 2005, a Chilean judge asked him about his reign of terror, which had resulted in the murder of over four thousand Chileans, the torture of over fifty thousand, and the “disappearance” of hundreds of thousands. The general piously answered, “I suffer for these losses, but God does the deeds; He will pardon me if I exceeded in some, which I don't think I did.”28
BOLIVIA GETS THE BIRD
In 1975, the Bolivian Interior Ministry—a publicly acknowledged subsidiary of the CIA—drew up a master plan with the help of Vatican officials for the elimination of liberation theology. Dubbed the “Banzer Plan”—after Hugo Banzer Suárez, Bolivia's right-wing dictator, who fancied himself the “defender of Christian civilization,” the scheme was adopted by ten Latin American governments.29 Banzer had come to power in Bolivia as the result of a three-day coup in August 1971 that left 110 people dead and 600 wounded. The coup, as recently declassified US State Department documents show, was funded by the CIA as part of Operation Condor.30
In order to mount the master plan, Banzer relied on Klaus Barbie, who recruited a mercenary army of neofascist terrorists, including Stefano delle Chiaie.31 To fund the army, Banzer ordered coca trees to be planted throughout the country's ailing cotton fields. Between 1974 and 1980, land in coca production tripled.32 The coca was exported to Columbian cartel laboratories, including Barbie's Transmaritania. A multibillion dollar industry was born. The tremendous upsurge in coca supply from Bolivia sharply drove down the price of cocaine, fueling a huge new market and the rise of the Colombian cartels. The street price of cocaine in 1975 was fifteen hundred dollars a gram. Within a decade, the price fell to two hundred dollars per gram.33 The CIA became an active participant in this new drug network by creating a pipeline between the Colombian cartels and the black neighborhoods of Compton and Los Angeles. The pipeline was unearthed by Gary Webb, a reporter for San Jose Mercury News, in 1996. Webb's findings resulted in an investigation by the US Senate, which served to confirm his claims.34
THE “PERFECT CRIME”
Even prior to the enactment of the Banzer Plan, the Vatican played a key role in the emergence of the cocaine trade by offering the drug cartels its money-laundering service in exchange for stiff fees. To initiate this process, the Holy See established a chain of shell companies in Panama and the Bahamas that transferred deposits from the cartels to Banco Ambrosiano and the Italian banks under Sindona's control. From these private and parochial banks, the money flowed to the IOR and from the IOR to financial firms in Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein. The first shell company established by the Vatican for this purpose was the Cisalpine Overseas Bank in the Bahamas.
Cisalpine had been set up by Sindona, Roberto Calvi, and Archbishop Marcinkus through Banco Ambrosiano Holding, a Luxembourg company under the Holy See's control. By the time Operation Condor got underway, Cisalpine was receiving regular deposits of millions in cash from Pablo Escobar and other Latin American drug chieftains. Cisalpine functioned solely as a laundry for black money. On any given day, throughout the 1970s, the shell company held $75 million in cash deposits. Cisalpine's immediate success caused Archbishop Marcinkus to proclaim that the shell company represented a “perfect crime.”35
Once the Banzer Plan got underway, Bolivian officials began compiling dossiers on church activists; censoring and shutting down progressive Catholic media outlets; planting Communist literature on church premises; and arresting or expelling undesirable foreign priests and nuns. The CIA also funded anti-Marxist religious groups that engaged in a wide range of covert operations, from bombing churches to overthrowing constitutionally elected governments. The plan gave rise to a series of clerical assassinations, culminating in the murder of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, a leading proponent of liberation theology.36
THE DIRTY WAR
But no Latin American country, not even Pinochet's Chile, could equal the levels of violence that followed the military coup of March 24, 1976, in Argentina. Indeed, the only regime to create a state of fear approximating that of Argentina was Hitler's Germany.37 (There were other parallels to Nazism, including a government-sponsored hate campaign against the country's four hundred thousand Jews.) As many as thirty thousand political prisoners (including students, union organizers, journalists, and even pregnant women) were killed or disappeared during the 1976–1983 “Dirty War,” which was fully endorsed by the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations.38 Political killings took place on the average of seven a day in 1977. Nor were Argentines the only victims. An estimated fourteen thousand refugees from other South American military regimes were told to leave the country or face the possibility of arrest. Torture wa
s automatic for anyone arrested, according to a spokesman for the World Council of Churches.39
THE US ENDORSEMENT
Recently declassified National Security documents show that the CIA and the US State Department remained primary sponsors of the military junta, which was led by General Jorge Videla. On February 16, 1976, six weeks before the coup, Robert Hill, the US ambassador to Argentina, reported to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that the plans for the coup were underway and that a public relations campaign had been mounted that would cast the new military regime in a positive light. Hill added that even though “some executions would probably be necessary,” the leaders of the junta remained determined “to minimize any resulting problems with the US”40
On March 25, 1979, two days after the coup, William Rogers, assistant secretary for Latin America, advised Kissinger that the military takeover of Argentina would result in “a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal of blood.” To this warning, Kissinger responded, “Yes, but that is in our interest.”41
On March 30, 1976, Ambassador Hill sent a seven-page assessment of the new regime to Kissinger. In the report, Hill wrote, “This is probably the best executed and most civilized coup in Argentine history.” One week later, US Congress approved a request from the Ford Administration, written by Kissinger, to provide $50 million in aid to the new military regime.42
THE JEWISH POGRAM
With such aid in hand, the junta launched not only its purge of left-wing dissidents but also an attack on the Jewish community. Bookstores and kiosks were flooded with cheap editions of works by Hitler and Goebbels; Jewish schools, synagogues, newspapers, and businesses were bombed; prominent Jewish citizens were kidnapped, blackmailed, and intimidated; and a series of crude anti-Semitic programs were aired on Argentine television. In August 1976 unidentified thugs drove through Buenos Aires's Jewish quarter, Barrio Once, strafing shops and synagogues with machine guns. The walls of the city of Mendoza in northwestern Argentina were painted with swastikas and slogans such as “Be a patriot! Kill a Jew!” In April 1976 the public was invited by two groups calling themselves the Aryan Integral Nationalist Fatherland and the Pious Christian Crusade to attend Masses in the Buenos Aires cathedral “for the eternal rest of our blood brother in Christ, Adolf Hitler.”43
CATHOLIC COMPLICITY
On the eve of the coup, General Jorge Videla and other plotters received the blessing of the Archbishop of Paraná, Adolfo Tortolo. The day of the takeover itself, the military leaders had a lengthy meeting with the leaders of the bishop's conference. As he emerged from that meeting, Archbishop Tortolo said that although “the Church has its own specific mission, there are circumstances in which it cannot refrain from participating even when it is a matter of problems related to the specific order of the state.” He went on to urge all Argentines to “cooperate in a positive way” with the new government. After thousands had disappeared, the bishop said: “I have no knowledge, I have no reliable proof, of human rights being violated in our country” and praised the military regime, saying that the armed forces were simply “carrying out their duty.”44
The vicar for the army, Bishop Victorio Bonamín, characterized the campaign as a defense of “morality, human dignity, and ultimately a struggle to defend God…. Therefore, I pray for divine protection over this ‘Dirty War’ in which we are engaged.” He told a university audience in December 1977 that the world was divided into “atheistic materialism and Christian humanism.” Though he denied any knowledge of individual cases, he said: “If I could speak with the government, I would tell it that we must remain firm in the positions we're taking: foreign accusations about disappearances should be ignored.”45
PAPAL SANCTION
General Videla, who is currently serving a life sentence for his part in the Dirty War, told reporters that he had conferred with Cardinal Raúl Francisco Primatesta, the leading Argentine cleric, about the regime's policy of eradicating left-wing activists. He further insisted that he maintained ongoing conversations with Pio Laghi, the papal nuncio, and the leading bishops from Argentina's Episcopal Conference. These dignitaries, he insisted, advised him of the manner in which the junta should deal with all dissidents, including clerics who advocated liberation theology.46
The general's claim is supported by Bishop Tortolo, who in 1976 said that the clergy was advised of all actions made by the junta, particularly in regard to troublesome priests and nuns.47 Tortolo made this statement when questioned about the disappearance of two Jesuit priests—Francisco Jalics and Orlando Yorio—and six members of their parish. The disappeared priests were under the charge of Fr. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Provincial General of the Society of Jesus in Argentina. They were espousing liberation theology among the slum dwelling poor of Buenos Aires.48
THE TORTURE CHAMBER
Fr. Jalics and Fr. Yorio—the two Jesuit priests in Bergoglio's charge, were taken to the notorious Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA) in Buenos Aires. ESMA was the most important of the military government's 340 detention and torture centers. A trip to ESMA typically began with an introduction to “Caroline,” an electric prodding rod with two prolonged wires. The visitors were stripped and tied to a steel bed frame. Electricity was applied to the victims, who were periodically doused with water to increase the effects. If the subject was a woman, the interrogators went for the breasts, vagina, or anus. If a man, they applied the wires to the genitals, tongue, or neck. Sometimes victims twitched so uncontrollably that they not only lost control of their bowels but also shattered their own arms and legs. Fr. Patrick Rice, an Irish priest who had worked in the slums and was detained for several days at ESMA, recalled watching his flesh sizzle as the electricity flowed through his body. What Fr. Rice most remembered was the smell: “It was like bacon,” he said.49 Children were tortured in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. One torturer estimates that about sixty babies passed through the facility and that all but two (whose heads had been smashed against the walls) were sold to suitable Argentine couples.50
At ESMA, which also served as a disposal site for other naval camps, corpses were initially buried under the sports field. After the field was filled, the bodies were burned daily, at 5:30 in the afternoon, usually after having been cut up with a circular saw. Eventually, the ESMA officials hit upon the idea of aerial disposal at sea. The dead were dumped from airplanes hundreds of miles off the coast of Buenos Aires, along with torture victims who had been drugged into a comatose state. One pilot testified that prisoners fell like ants from the planes.51
Declassified documents show that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance continued to support the military junta in Argentina. One communiqué establishes that Vance was fully informed of the situation within ESMA but opted to allow the horrors to persist.52
THE QUESTION OF BERGOGLIO
Fr. Jalics and Fr. Yorio—the two Jesuit priests—were released five months after captivity. They were found half-naked in a field outside Buenos Aires. Fr. Bergoglio later insisted that he had secured their release but no documentation exists that he had intervened on behalf of the two priests in his charge. Fr. Yorio, at the 1985 trial of the leaders of the junta, said that Bergoglio had handed them over to the death squad: “I am sure that he himself [Fr. Bergoglio] gave over the list with our names to the navy.”53 He further refuted the claim that Bergoglio had saved the lives of the priests, saying, “I do not have any reason to think he did anything for our release, but much to the contrary.”
In addition, Fr. Yorio said that Bergoglio had expelled him from a teaching position at a Jesuit school and had spread false rumors to the Argentine high command, stating that Yorio was “a communist” and “a subversive guerrilla, who was after women.”54
Fr. Jalics also refuted Bergoglio, saying, “From subsequent statements by an official and 30 documents that I was able to access later, we were able to prove, without any room for doubt, that this man [Bergoglio] did not keep his promise [to protect the priests], bu
t, on the contrary, he presented a false denunciation to the military.”55 Fr. Jalics, who has retreated to a monastery in Germany, said that he is now reconciled with the past because “forgiveness is a central tenet of Christianity.”
Journalist Horacio Verbitsky recently uncovered a military document from 1976 in the archives of Argentina's Ministry of Foreign Affairs that appears to provide proof that Fr. Bergoglio provided damning testimony about the two priests in his charge to the junta. The document, bearing the signature of Anselmo Orcoyen, who served as the director of the Catholic Division on Ministry, appeared on the front page of Página/12, the Argentine daily newspaper, on March 17, 2013.56 It reads:
Father Francisco Jalics
Activity of Disseverment in the Congregation of Religious Sisters (Conflicts of Obedience)
Detained in the Navy School of Mechanics 24/5/76 XI/76 (6 months)—accused with Fr. Yorio of suspicious contact with guerrillas.
They lived in a small community which the Jesuit Superior dissolved in February of 1976 but they refused to obey the order to leave the community on March 19. The two were let go. No bishop of Buenos Aires would receive them.
This notification was received by Mr. Orcoyen and given to him by Fr. Bergoglio, who signed the note with special recommendations not to approve of their requests.
(signed) Orcoyen
The Vatican, at the time of this writing, continues to affirm Bergoglio's innocence in this matter, insisting that there has never been a “concrete or credible accusation” against him.57
THE THEFT OF BABIES
But other criminal allegations have been directed against Bergoglio. The Grandmothers of the Plaza of Mayo, a human rights group established to locate children stolen during the Dirty War,” states that the Jesuit's provincial general failed to assist a family of five, who were awaiting execution by the death squad. One member of the family, Elena de la Cuadra, was a pregnant young woman. The five had appealed to the Superior General of the Society of Jesus at the Vatican. The Superior General turned the matter over to Bergoglio, who remained the provincial general of the order in Argentina. Bergoglio, in turn, sat on the case for several months, only to pass it off to a local Catholic bishop. The bishop reportedly returned to Bergoglio with a letter from the junta stating the four members of the family had been killed but the young woman had been kept alive long enough to deliver her baby.58 No one in the junta apparently wanted to be accused of abortion. The baby was given to a prominent family and could not be returned to its maternal grandmother or any other blood relative.59
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