Scola’s performance was unsurprising and Ouellet’s was impressive, but commentators were once again startled by the strong performance of the unassuming cardinal from Buenos Aires. Many had included Bergoglio on their papabile lists purely on the basis of his second-place finish during the 2005 conclave; they felt that he was not an obvious choice for the Italian cardinals and curia, who dominated the cardinal breakdown, and he had garnered only 40 votes out of 115 last time. In the lead-up to this conclave he ranked very low on everyone’s lists. And yet here he was again.
Amid a swirl of intrigue and speculation, the cardinals departed the Sistine Chapel and returned to their residence for a dinner of bad food and discreet campaigning, during which Argentinian Leonardo Sandri advised his fellow countryman, “Prepare yourself, dear friend.” The relief Bergoglio had felt when Ratzinger was named as successor to John Paul eight years earlier was a distant memory as he retired on what was to be his last night as a humble cardinal. He slept badly, his mind racing with the knowledge that, the next day, it was quite possible he would become pope.
DAY TWO: A DAY OF FIVE BALLOTS
With so much at play, the cardinals awoke on March 13, 2013, no surer than the world at large whether they would have a pope by the end of the day. The morning voting began at 9:30, and as early as 11:38 A.M. an ambiguously white-gray puff of smoke emerged, causing a frenzy of wild speculation. Was it white smoke? If white, it meant a two-thirds majority had already been reached. So soon? But yes, it was surely white smoke … but then, no. At last the smoke thickened, turned black: no decision had yet been made.
By lunchtime, however, the situation inside the chapel had most certainly changed. Canadian media reported that Scherer’s campaign had faltered and that support for Cardinal Scola had dwindled “after many cardinals apparently decided they did not want a Vatican insider presiding over the Holy See.” It was now a two-man race, with votes divided between Ouellet and Bergoglio, who was out in front with fifty.
Back at Casa Santa Marta, lunch was far from a relaxing affair. Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston sat next to his usually jovial friend but felt Bergoglio “seemed very weighed down by what was happening.” In an interview after the conclave, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires recalled that it was in this moment that he began to realize that he might be elected, and “he felt a deep and inexplicable peace, and interior consolation come over him, along with a great darkness, a deep obscurity about everything else. And those feelings accompanied him until his election later that day.” After lunch, it transpired that Ouellet had been doing some reflection of his own. Having increased his votes after all three ballots, the Canadian decided to withdraw from the race, just as Bergoglio had done during the 2005 conclave when he asked his backers to vote for Ratzinger. The race was now effectively over.
When a fourth ballot was conducted that afternoon, Bergoglio’s tally leapt to just below the seventy-seven votes required to secure the papacy. The rain began to fall heavily over the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square, and a lone seagull perched on top of the chimney. As 6:15 P.M. came and went, commentators began to assume—correctly—that a fourth ballot had not produced a pope. What nobody knew was that a fifth ballot had been held immediately after the fourth, but there was a problem. The count was wrong: 116 ballots had been cast rather than 115. Someone had returned his ballot to the altar unaware that there was another, blank paper attached underneath. One could be forgiven for thinking a mistake this simple could be rectified by removing the blank ballot, but this was the Vatican, and it was decided that an entirely new vote must take place.
After the sixth ballot of the conclave had been counted, and counted again, the votes were read aloud: “Bergoglio, Bergoglio, Bergoglio.” When the tally crossed the magic number of seventy-seven, tension broke and applause echoed around the chamber. The final votes were read out, and the new pope’s supporters leapt to their feet to congratulate him; as Cardinal Dolan recalled, “I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house.” Sitting next to the bewildered Bergoglio was his great friend the Franciscan cardinal from Brazil, Claudio Hummes, who turned and hugged him before saying, “Don’t forget the poor.”
It was over. All 115 votes had been counted, and Bergoglio had taken ninety of them. The dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, approached and asked in Latin, “Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff?” to which Bergoglio replied, “I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ.” When asked what name he would take, and with the words spoken to him moments earlier by Cardinal Hummes still in his mind, Bergoglio replied, “I choose the name Francis, in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi.”
And with that, a sinner became pope.
But the question remains: Just what were the sins that cast such long shadows across his soul?
7
A DIRTY SECRET
To fully understand Jorge Bergoglio’s transgressions, we must first provide a context. The 1970s and early 1980s represented a climax of many years of violent political struggle and coups d’état that had cost thousands of Argentine citizens’ lives since the country won its freedom from the Spanish Empire at the end of the Argentine War of Independence in 1818. Violence as a means of restoring order had become an endemic part of society, and the military coup of March 1976 proved to be no different.
The United States was informed about the approaching coup by the junta leaders, who reassured the American ambassador, Robert Hill, that they had studied General Augusto Pinochet’s successful U.S.-backed coup in Chile in 1973, and theirs would “not follow the lines of the [Pinochet] takeover,” during the first two months of which 1,850 suspected leftists were murdered and a further thirteen hundred of the forty thousand arrested “disappeared.”
To an Argentine people weary of the escalation of political violence and the disastrous government of Isabel Perón, the coup staged on March 24 brought a sense of relief and optimism. The Americans were impressed with the outcome, which Hill described as “probably the best executed and most civilized coup in Argentine history.” Two days after the takeover, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stated in his staff meeting, “Whatever chance they [the junta] have, they will need a little encouragement … because I do want to encourage them. I don’t want to give the sense that they’re harassed by the United States.”
The new Argentine military government was led by General Jorge Rafael Videla, who had been selected as president from among the three coup leaders. Its grip on power was brutal. Those Argentinians who had the courage to resist it were subject to a brutal campaign of violence, kidnapping, torture, and, in the case of the thirty thousand “disappeared,” murder.
Subversives at the top of the list included communists, trade union members, and anyone who had voiced antipathy to the regime, but in the way of such things, the targeting of subversives became a broadly indiscriminate policy of the policing of thought. For example, more than sixty students from one Buenos Aires high school were “disappeared” between June and September 1976, simply because they had been members of the student council.
In November 1976, Amnesty International dispatched a delegation of independent observers to Argentina to assess the worsening situation. In its extensive 1977 report—following which Amnesty was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that year—it was revealed that the junta admitted to “the existence of between 2,000 and 10,000 political prisoners” (Amnesty believed the figure to be around 5,000 to 6,000) and that “the total capacity of the prisons was between 4,000 and 5,000.” With the drastic increase in the prison population, the regime was forced to think of creative ways to mask its activities and hide detainees.
The solution it settled on was to establish approximately 520 clandestine detention centers across the country, the most notorious of which was the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), where Jorge Bergoglio’s old friend Esther Ballestrino de Careaga was held and tortured before her final death
flight. Argentina having sheltered many exiled Nazis following the end of the Second World War, the Argentine junta not only borrowed the idea for a network of secret concentration camps but also adorned the walls with swastikas and forced prisoners to shout, “Heil Hitler.” According to Esther’s daughter, Ana María, who survived her abduction, “They put on cassettes of Hitler speeches to drown out the screams while they tortured us.”
THE WORLD WATCHED ON
As the junta continued to conceal the scale, and destroy any physical evidence, of the crimes being committed, the Argentine public was left to interpret whispered rumors. Those who were certain of the crimes, having experienced the loss of a friend or loved one, were often batted away when they requested information from the military. The authorities would either deny all knowledge or, sometimes, say that the individuals had fled the country.
These underlying conflicts within the national consciousness were exacerbated when Argentina played host to the FIFA World Cup in June 1978. In scenes eerily reminiscent of the 1936 Olympic Games in Nazi Germany, the rest of the world became complicit in upholding a murderous regime by attending a sporting event that had clearly been politicized to legitimize the position of the government. The military dictatorship understood the potential domestic and global leverage that the tournament could bring to the regime, and so proceeded to appropriate what was called a “World Cup of Peace” as a shining example of the government’s success at restoring order.
The regime’s confidence was misplaced when it came to foreign journalists, many of whom, having been invited to cover the soccer, spent a great deal more time shining a spotlight on the atrocities. Amnesty International printed posters in Spanish, English, and German, declaring, FOOTBALL YES—TORTURE NO, and particular coverage was given to the protests of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who timed their weekly protest, during which hundreds marched in the square wearing white head scarves, each carrying a picture of her missing children, to coincide with the opening ceremony of the World Cup on June 1, 1978. It was a symbolic gesture that was not lost on the press.
In the United States, Jimmy Carter’s presidential administration was at such a loss as to how to deal with the Argentine situation that it even considered approaching Pope John Paul II to put pressure on the junta. In a confidential memo entitled “The Tactic of Disappearance” from the American embassy in Buenos Aires to the secretary of state in Washington and the Vatican office of the U.S. embassy in Rome, it was suggested that the State Department “encourage the Vatican and the Argentine Church to intervene with the Argentine authorities. The Papal Nuncio here understands the issues and is already involved in trying to get the [Government of Argentina] to examine the morality and wisdom of the tactic of disappearance.… The Church and the pope have far more influence here than the [United States government] and can be the most effective advocates of a full return to the rule of law.”
The church did little to pressure the government, publicly at least—later, it was claimed that efforts were made behind closed doors. The papal nuncio at this time, Archbishop Pio Laghi, became well aware of the disappearances after the military provided him in December 1978 with lists of the names of fifteen thousand people it had “taken care of.” But neither he nor the Vatican attempted to make this information public. Laghi’s record, therefore, divides opinion, with some praising him for his endeavors to obtain from the junta information about disappeared persons and even, in some cases, to secure their release. Others have been highly critical, accusing him of being wholly complicit with the regime and even reporting that he regularly played tennis with one of the main leaders of the coup.
But Pio Laghi was, of course, not the only priest accused of being unsettlingly close to the Argentine military rulers.
“I DID WHAT I COULD”
Two principal events occurred during the early years of the junta’s reign that have called into question the actions of the man who would, almost forty years later, be elected 266th leader of the Catholic Church: the abduction and torture of Jesuit priests Orlando Yorio and Franz Jalics, and the abduction and murder of Esther Ballestrino de Careaga.
During a criminal investigation of the junta’s concentration camps in 2010, Archbishop Bergoglio was called as a witness to the events and was questioned for four and a half hours by human rights lawyers and three judges. During his testimony—Bergoglio had previously refused two court summonses—he was accused by lawyers of being evasive and repeatedly refused to name names when questioned about the sources of his information. Among other things, Bergoglio described the events surrounding the kidnapping of Esther Ballestrino de Careaga and detailed the attempts he made to gather as much information as possible about her disappearance. When challenged by lawyers, who asked if, “given their friendship, [he] should have done more for Ballestrino de Careaga,” he replied, “I did what I could.” For many people, what he did was nowhere near enough.
The most damning accusations centered on the case of two Jesuit priests, Orlando Yorio and Franz Jalics, former theological teachers of the young Bergoglio, who were arrested on May 23, 1976, in the Buenos Aires villa miseria known as Rivadavia del Bajo Flores, where they worked. Like many Jesuits during this time, they had embraced the reforms of Vatican II that encouraged them to promote a church of the poor, and they were known as “slum priests.” There was a good deal of crossover between this outreach work and the formation of organizations such as the left-wing, and occasionally Marxist, Movement of Priests for the Third World. And it was exactly this gray area that endangered the lives of many clergy.
After they were arrested, Yorio and Jalics were hooded and chained before being taken to the infamous ESMA detention center. Here they were stripped naked and tortured by military police over a period of five days, in an attempt to elicit a confession that they were colluding with left-wing guerillas, before being moved to a house in Don Torcuato, twenty-two miles outside of Buenos Aires. While many prisoners gave false confessions to spare themselves further brutality, Jalics and Yorio maintained that they had committed no crimes, even after they’d been administered so-called truth serums. Yorio later recalled that after he had spent many days insisting he was innocent, his torturer made a chilling and revealing comment about the true vision of Videla’s society: “We know you’re not violent. You’re not guerrillas. But you’ve gone to live with the poor. Living with the poor unites them. Uniting the poor is subversion.”
On October 23—five months after their abduction, having been held in chains and blindfolded—the pair was drugged, stripped naked except for their hoods, and transported by helicopter to an airfield, where they were dumped. Regaining consciousness and removing their hoods hours later, they discovered they were the only people there—but they were free. Jalics and Yorio walked until they found a farm and soon after, according to Bergoglio’s testimony at the 2010 ESMA trial, Yorio telephoned him. Bergoglio stated that “at that point one had to take all possible precautions,” and so he told the priests, “Do not tell me where you are, and do not move from where you are. Send me a person to tell me where we can meet.”
Who can say why the priests were not loaded onto the death flight and thrown from the air with other detainees? Perhaps their captors could not stomach killing priests as part of a holy war to purge their Christian civilization of communists.
When the pair returned home, they began speculating over what had led to their abduction and torture. Their suspicions fell heavily at the door of their provincial superior, the head of the Jesuits in Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio. A week before their abduction, their priestly licenses had been withdrawn and they had been ordered to close down the religious community they had founded in Bajo Flores three years earlier. The philosophical underpinning of the venture was deemed too politically close to liberation theology, with its Marxist undertones.
The two first fell afoul of Bergoglio during an earlier purge of left-wing associations within the Jesuits toward the end of 1974. Yorio
and Jalics did not take kindly to the upstart provincial superior, a former student of theirs, dictating what work they were allowed to do within the community, and the pair refused to disband their project, even after Bergoglio’s decision was endorsed by the superior general of the Jesuits, Pedro Arrupe, at the beginning of 1976. By February 1976, Bergoglio told the two priests he was under “tremendous pressure from Rome and sectors of the Argentinian Church.” Arrupe had decided that they must choose whether they wished to continue as priests within the Society of Jesus, and therefore close down the community, or leave the Jesuits entirely. According to Yorio, “he [Bergoglio] had told the general that this order was tantamount to expelling us from the Society, but that the general’s mind was firm in the matter.” The ultimatum left them completely torn, and Bergoglio suggested that they request a leave of absence to give themselves some time to consider their options.
The death squads had already gunned down another slum priest, Father Carlos Mugica, outside his church, and accounts of violence against clergy were increasing. Supporters of Bergoglio insist that not only did he help hundreds of people escape persecution by the junta, but also that it was not ideological objections that caused him to close down the community but, rather, a fear for the priests’ safety. These reports do chime with the fact that Bergoglio himself played a vital role in securing the exhumation of Mugica’s remains in April 1999 from the middle-class cemetery where he had originally been buried and their transfer to Villa 31, where he was laid to rest in the slum he had given his life for.
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