For the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics – and for Latin America’s 483 million Catholics – Semana Santa (Holy Week) has been a surprising time of provocative and perhaps uncharted change. The new pope is not only the first non-European to become heir to the throne of St. Peter in more than 1,000 years, he is the first pope from the Americas, the first pope from Latin America, and the first to take the name Francisco (Francis), after the humble, much revered Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan Order.
The election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, though born in Buenos Aires, is a product of Italian parents who immigrated to Argentina, startled many Latin Americans into a simultaneous flow of tears, laughter, head-shaking and cheers. Pope Francis I is a man, his relatives say, who has always been committed to the poor and has an apparently irrepressible warm sense of humor, who will soon be taking on the historically much feared – and today and often before – much criticized Roman Curia. A phenomenon some times referred to as the Court of Rome (meaning not a Court of Law, but a Royal Court). Actually it is an intricate, deeply politically shaped bureaucracy made up of a lot of men who today – and through history – are sure they are the Church’s aristocrats. As Catholicism became not merely a system of belief, but a world-wide influence, politically, intellectually and culturally, Catholics came to believe the Curia is what makes the Church tick. Presently many Catholics, and other observers, harbor the uncomfortable impression that “it very badly needs to be cleaned up,” wrote one Rome-based journalist the other day. This is doubly so if Pope Francis insists on a “poor church, for the poor.”
Catholics hope that the theologically conservative Francis, as he settles into power and takes on the challenges and frustrations (that seem to have taken down Benedict XVI) will be able to hang onto his down-to-earth instincts. This is especially true as he tackles the Curia – which, wrote one expert in the Vatican, is not simply a Curia, but “ten or more separate curias” (sacred congregations). Each seems to go its own way. And now this clutter of bureaucrats (all with their individual ambitions), most of whom have spent much of their careers in the Holy See, or abroad in diplomatic posts, is embellished with (implied?) skeins of corruption. And of course he will have to deal with the dregs of pedophilia.The long-running controversy regarding Jorge Mario Bergoglio when he was, at 39, the head of Jesuits in Argentina during the dictatorship of General Jorge Videla, 1976-1983. Some have accused him of collaborating with this savage regime, and for not protesting sufficiently against the military’s torture and killing aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at Catholic priests and “civilians” who embraced “liberation theology,” seen by both Videla and the Vatican as too “left-leaning.”
Bergoglio had instructed such priests, as the Holy See had instructed priests of every rank and of all orders, that this line of behavior was not embraced by the Catholic hierarchy. Two Argentine priests, Oriando Yorio and Franz Jalics, were warned by Bergoglio to cease their liberation theology activities. When they refused, he dismissed them just before they were picked up by members of Videla’s Navy. They were tortured, but found alive five months later, drugged and semi naked. Yorio accused Bergoglio of withdrawing Jesuit protection. Jalics confirmed the Naval kidnapping, but attributed the arrest to a former lay collaborator who become a guerrilla, was captured and named Yorio and Jalics under torture. Jalics has reconciled with Bergoglio.
Bergoglio’s friends and associates have defended him, saying he protected those he could secretly, primarily by getting them out of Argentina. The cluster of details on both sides remain foggy. Prominent in the minds of Argentine Jesuits at that time surely were the facts that the Spanish, when it became displeased with the Jesuits at a time when Mexico was still a Spanish colony, suppressed the order. In 1773 it commanded all Jesuits to leave Latin America. The order wasn’t revived until 1814. And, in Mexico, President Plutarco Calles and his puppets almost totally destroyed the Catholic Church. United States Ambassador to Mexico Dwight Morrow was an enthusiast of the Mexican people and their culture. He set out to convince Calles that an anti-Catholic campaign in the long run would be self-destructive. Amazingly – for Calles didn’t particularly like or trust “gringos” – Morrow succeeded. In June 1929, the Catholic Churches of Mexico were opened under the presidency of Portes Gil, who had been placed in power by Calles.
But both times of near permanent extinction had been close calls well remembered in Latin America.
Bergoglio, it has been said, was fearful that the thin network being used by his office to spirit targets of “repression” out of danger, would lead to a bloody war against the Church in general, and the Jesuits specifically. Yet the controversy, whichever side is right, clearly will be another challenge to the new “Pope of the Poor,” as Francis is being called. And certainly has already added to his already over-crowded agenda of “Catholic Church problems.”