After 35 years of being lied to by the Church of the Plutocracy, like Charlie Brown, we’re all expected to try to kick the football yet again and believe what the pope and his men tell us. Like, Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Pope “Francis” because he loves the poor as did St. Francis of Assisi. Or that riding the bus makes him some kind of saint.
Then we find out that he was at best silent during Argentina’s Dirty War (1975-1983) where the most heinous methods of torture even conceived were inflicted on his fellow Argentines. Or we can believe one of his victims that Bergoglio "effectively handed [the priests] over to death squads" because they helped the poor instead of just talking about it.
Pope Francis says he loves the poor but he joined his two papal predecessors in rejecting liberation theology which urges society and government to a “preferential option for the poor” when deciding alternative courses of action.
There’s also an American connection to Argentina’s military junta which reminds us how long we’ve been lied to.
When President Jimmy Carter’s human rights coordinator, Patricia Derian, berated the Argentine junta for its brutality, Reagan used his newspaper column to chide her, suggesting that Derian should “walk a mile in the moccasins” of the Argentine generals before criticizing them.
One of the prelates complicit with the junta was papal nuncio (ambassador) to Argentina, Archbishop Pio Laghi. “Christian values are threatened by an ideology that the people reject. The church and the armed forces share responsibility. The former is an integral element in the process. It accompanies the latter, not only by its prayers but by its
actions,” Laghi stated in a public address.
Shortly after Reagan’s election, Pope John Paul II transferred Laghi to Washington D.C. directly from his post in Argentina as nuncio to the U.S. to be his guide in the selection of American bishops who would support the GOP. Laghi “developed close ties to [George H.W. Bush and] the larger Bush clan.” Before the Wojtyla papacy, the U.S. episcopate had supported civil rights and banning nuclear weapons. As a body, it was transformed into a group who would use abortion and homosexuality to elect plutocrats. While saving Poland from communism, John Paul II and Reagan aligned to destroy the freedom movements in Latin America which threatened the hegemony of the Church and oligarchs.
The new Pope Francis is as willing to use abortion and same-sex marriage to elected governments as any other Catholic prelate. “Politically, the Argentine government always viewed him with mistrust,” said Rosendo Fraga, a political analyst in Buenos Aires. “In the government’s offices there was a sigh of relief when he recently left as head of the episcopate,” the body of bishops from Argentina.
Most of you already know that Bergoglio opposed the government’s legislation approving same-sex marriage as “a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”
The truth is that the Latin American church is one of the world’s most reactionary. Its anti-gay crusade (Argentina’s gay marriage law is a decided exception in the region) in fact feels mild compared to its rigidity on women’s issues. Thanks to the Catholic hierarchy’s hardline political power, no region has as many countries (five) that ban abortion in all cases, even rape, incest and when the mother’s life is at risk. At the same time, few regions have such draconian restrictions on access to birth control.
Little wonder, then, that few regions also see as many unsafe clandestine abortions: more than 4 million a year, according to the New York-based Guttmacher Institute—a quarter of which result in hospitalizations or death from complications. According to Human Rights Watch, 40% of all pregnancies in Argentina end in illegal abortions. Some Latin American countries, especially in Central America, suffer maternal mortality rates 20 times higher than Western Europe’s.
There have also been several news reports regarding the pressure on the new pope to reform the Vatican Bank (aka IOR, Institute for Religious Works) to meet EU standards regarding money laundering. Some point to the appointment made just before Pope Benedict XVI resigned of the German lawyer, Ernst Von Freyberg to the IOR, as someone who will assist the new pope in this process.
It is the Vatican secretary of state, appointed by the pope, who heads a commission of five cardinals, who runs the IOR. The commission of cardinals selects five laymen who will also supervise operations and Von Freyberg is “president” of the laymen’s board. The reality is that the pope through his secretary of state directly controls the bank, not Von Freyberg.
So do I think the current College of Cardinals, each one appointed by John Paul II or Benedict XVI, would elect a man who will order that the IOR be operated in an honest and open fashion (maybe after moving funds into an Opus Dei financial network)?
Or do I think that cardinals appointed by John Paul II or Benedict XVI both of whom turned a blind eye to the worlds’ prelates who aided and abetted the sexual abuse of children would elect a man who will hold them all accountable for their own part?
Lucy, where’s that football?