From the mid seventies to the early eighties, Argentina was politically wracked by a military junta that had illegally seized power from the Péron government in 1976. The generals, led by unelected President Jorge Videla, held on to the reins until 1983.

Thousands of people who opposed the regime were murdered, a purge that Videla deemed regrettable but necessary to restore “Christian morals and values.” The dictator saw himself as a bulwark against terrorism, and he defined a terrorist as

…not only someone with a gun or bomb, but also anyone who encourages their use by ideas incompatible with Western Christian civilization.

Suspected dissidents could expect to be arrested or kidnapped, and taken to secret detention centers, where they might undergo torture

…with methods including electric shock, rape, simulated asphyxiation with water, and mock executions. They were left naked in cold wet cells through the winter, and were told their families would be killed if they didn’t tell what they knew.

Perhaps we will soon learn what Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now the new Pope, did and didn’t do during those seven dark and terrifying years.

We already know this: The Catholic Church as a whole did not oppose the dirty war, nor did it publicly protest the treatment of any of the scores of left-leaning activists and intellectuals who were kidnapped, beaten, tortured and killed. In fact, the church did pretty much the opposite. It habitually offered Videla support and advice.

A relative of one of dictator Videla’s victims reacts to his sentencing.

Just last year, around the time of Videla’s long-overdue sentencing, the close ties between Videla’s goons and the Roman Catholic prelates who lent him a veneer of legitimacy was confirmed by none other than … Videla himself.

Argentina’s former military dictator said he kept the country’s Catholic hierarchy informed about his regime’s policy of “disappearing” political opponents, and that Catholic leaders offered advice on how to “manage” the policy.

Jorge Videla said he had “many conversations” with Argentina’s primate, Cardinal Raúl Francisco Primatesta, about his regime’s dirty war against left-wing activists. He said there were also conversations with other leading bishops from Argentina’s episcopal conference as well as with the country’s papal nuncio at the time, Pio Laghi. “They advised us about the manner in which to deal with the situation,” said Videla in a series of interviews conducted by the magazine El Sur in 2010 but published only on Sunday [July 21, 2012].

Videla’s confession to El Sur

… confirms long-held suspicions that Argentina’s Catholic hierarchy collaborated with the military’s so-called process of national reorganisation, which sought to root out communism. In the years following the 1976 coup led by Videla, thousands of left-wing activists were swept up into secret detention centers where they were tortured and murdered. Military chaplains were assigned as spiritual advisers to the junior officers who staffed the centers.

In the 2012 book Disposición Final by Argentinian journalist Ceferino Reato,

Videla confirms for the first time that between 1976 and 1983, 8,000 Argentinians were murdered by his regime. The bodies were hidden or destroyed to prevent protests at home and abroad.

It’s debatable whether the ex-dictator truly came clean with that statement. Other sources, including human-rights groups, put the number of disappeared at 30,000 or more.

But the complicity of so-called men of the cloth has long been an open secret. Military cadets of the era recall that Catholic chaplains told them that “torture was not a moral problem but a weapon.”

The vicar for the army, Bishop Bonamin, characterized the government’s actions 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.

Through it all, where was Father Bergoglio, now known as Pope Francis?

It’s a fair question, isn’t it? He was already a star within Argentina’s Catholic hierarchy, recognized for his work rigor and leadership potential.

And there just may be a couple of skeletons in his closet:

On 15 April 2005, a human-rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against Bergoglio, as superior in the Society of Jesus of Argentina, accusing him of involvement in the kidnapping by the Navy in May 1976 (during the military dictatorship) of two Jesuit priests. The priests, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics, were found alive five months later, drugged and semi-nude. The complaint did not specify the nature of Bergoglio’s alleged involvement, and Bergoglio’s spokesman flatly denied the allegations.

Nothing came of it, but I expect that a tenacious investigative journalist can build substantially on the groundbreaking work of award-winning Argentinian muckraker Horacio Verbitsky, who explored his country’s Dirty War in books and articles. Verbitsky got several of the Videla regime’s henchmen to talk about their crimes. For instance, former navy captain Adolfo Scilingo, now serving a 640-year sentence in Spain for killing suspected leftists in Argentina, told Verbitsky that under Videla, “We did terrible things …, worse than the Nazis.” Scilingo pushed some 30 of his victims out of military planes flying over the Atlantic. Scilingo says he was so disturbed by his first death flight that he went to see a navy chaplain, Time magazine reported in 1995.

“He told me that it was a Christian death because they did not suffer, that it was necessary to eliminate them, that war was war and even the Bible provided for eliminating the weeds from the wheat field.”

The Roman Catholic Church, long criticized for tolerating the military, responded last week with a veiled mea culpa chastising priests who may have condoned the “dirty war.”

Perhaps Father Bergoglio somehow managed to avoid this then-pervasive, nasty political maelstrom. Or he might have found himself in the middle of it — holding, as he did, a position of prominence within the very Catholic Church that collaborated with Videla’s junta at the highest levels.

General Jorge Rafael Videla, beloved by Argentina’s Catholic establishment

As the brand new Pope Francis, who shepherds more than a billion Catholics and who is their final arbiter of morality, Cardinal Bergoglio should both expect to and be able to withstand a little scrutiny.

For the sake of the Catholic Church and its followers, critical questions about il Papa‘s past should have been raised well before his election today. If they were, within the conclave perhaps, the world is now entitled to the answers. If they weren’t, I’m counting on a few enterprising reporters to begin providing the facts in some detail.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

P.S.  For another example of how the Catholic Church too often aids strongmen and dictators, going as far as to encourage oppression and murder, read Luis Granados’ spine-chilling account of the Spanish Civil War. The Vatican, the Spanish Catholic leadership, and Generalissimo Franco all egged each other on to see who could be the fiercest anti-communist. With the Church’s blessing, Franco accepted military aid, including operational support, from both Hitler and Mussolini. More than 100,000 people went missing in the Spanish conflict. In most cases, they were never heard from again. In the Spanish countryside, the bones of the victims still occasionally work themselves to the surface of their unmarked shallow graves, as if begging to be acknowledged.

 [top image via De Volkskrant; bottom image via Cutting Edge News]

The new Pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, opposes marriage equality (but of course). He is so fiercely against it, in fact, that he claims those in favor have aligned themselves with Satan:

“Let’s not be naive. We’re not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

Sadly, he’s not quite as good at speaking out against non-fictional, plain-as-day evil:

Critics accuse him of failing to stand up publicly against the country’s military dictatorship from 1976-1983, when victims and their relatives often brought first-hand accounts of torture, death and kidnappings.

From our files, a story from 2010. The good news is, Father Fiala has time for extensive Bible study.

A Texas jury has sentenced a former Roman Catholic priest to 60 years in prison for plotting the death of a man who accused him of sexual abuse. Prosecutors had asked jurors Friday for a life sentence for 53-year-old John M. Fiala. … The ex-priest will be eligible for parole after 15 years. Fiala was convicted Thursday for solicitation of capital murder. Prosecutors say Fiala tried to hire a neighbor’s brother to kill the man who accused him of abuse in 2008 when Fiala was the priest at a rural West Texas parish and his accuser was 16.

[image via sgn.org]

The Vatican’s papal conclave, a word that literally means “with key,”

…has long been obsessed with secrecy. The cardinals swear an oath to that effect before even entering the Sistine Chapel, punishable by excommunication. Anyone else associated with the election, from doctors and nurses to housekeeping staff, must also swear to never tell anyone anything they hear.

Now, what is such a sacred oath of secrecy, sworn to the Almighty, really worth? Bupkis, the Vatican acknowledges; there’s no honor among thieves gossips.

On Monday, jamming devices designed to block cellphone calls, Internet signals and hidden microphones were installed inside the Sistine Chapel and nearby guest residences. WiFi will be blocked throughout Vatican City until the end of the conclave. And the conclave’s active Twitter- and Facebook-users have been forbidden access to their accounts along with all other forms of communication with the outside world.

If such measures are truly necessary, it follows that at least some of the participants don’t particularly tremble at the prospect of excommunication.

Neither, clearly, do they fear God’s wrath.

Ergo: Nor should anyone else.

Mary Johnson’s memoir An Unquenchable Thirst came out in paperback last week. It’s a compelling read.

When she was 17, Johnson spotted a picture of Mother Teresa on the cover of Time magazine¹, and thought she’d found her calling. She was still a teenager when she joined Teresa’s organization, the Missionaries of Charity, becoming a nun and thus a “bride of Christ.” Soon, however, doubts began to plague her.

The L.A. Times summarizes:

Over time, Johnson began to chafe at the political maneuvering and less-than-holy behavior of her superiors, several of whom she names in the book while disguising rank-and-file nuns and priests with pseudonyms. Even Mother Teresa herself doesn’t escape Johnson’s sharp eye and sense of injustice. While Johnson clearly loved the “living saint” and admired her life’s work, Mother Teresa comes off as a control freak who senses her chance at sainthood under the congenial Pope John Paul II and strictly adheres to the rules set by Rome, including several of the Catholic teachings that have kept women in a place of powerlessness.

It’s still an altogether more charitable depiction of the Albanian nun than the one painted by the late Christopher Hitchens, who famously called her “a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud,” and who published The Missionary Position, a book that takes Mother Teresa to task for allegedly promulgating poverty rather than fighting it.

To bolster his case, Hitchens offered, among other things, such damning Mother Teresa quotes as:

I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.

And

The greatest destroyer of peace today is the crime of the innocent unborn child [abortion]. If a mother can murder her own child in her own womb, what is left for you and for me to kill each other?

Hitchens, while also not a fan of abortion, nevertheless pointed out that Teresa’s life-long opposition to abortion, and even to “non-natural” birth control, inevitably resulted in bigger families and more mouths to feed — and therefore, in more poverty, hunger, and sickness. He wrote:

Tenderness about the unborn is an emotion that I share myself. But tenderness about the unborn also becomes an overtly political matter when it’s preached by a presumable virgin who also campaigns against birth control.

If the word presumable seems a bit unkind, Hitchens might in fact have been wise to the forbidden sexual peccadilloes that were hardly uncommon at the Missionaries of Charity. This is where we return to Mary Johnson’s memoir, and to the L.A. Times‘ summary of it:

What overwhelms Johnson [is her] battle against loneliness and the lack of emotional and physical intimacy. Although Missionaries of Charity nuns are forbidden any physical contact — even a friendly hug — Johnson engages in sexual relationships with other nuns on several occasions, including one affair with a sexual predator that the Missionary of Charity leadership knew about but chose to retain on the roster.

After 20 years, and more religious misbehavior — including sex with a priest — Johnson left the Missionaries of Charity. She ultimately also abandoned her Catholic faith.

On her website, she explains why and when she decided to write her book: it was

the day my youngest sister phoned to say she was about to marry a man she’d met twice; their guru had decided the two “could contain each other.” We human beings sometimes do odd things, especially when religion is involved. Odd and interesting and “not discussed in polite company” things. But it seems to me that what happens when we surrender our wills to religious figures — or deny our sexual natures or believe the Creator of the Universe speaks to us — are things that need to be discussed.

As you can tell from her tone, Johnson can hardly be categorized as disgruntled. Today, she experiences the world differently: no longer through the curious, distorted prism of religious faith, but free from bitterness.

It seems to me that we damage ourselves and our communities when we claim infallible conclusions based on subjective spiritual experience or ancient tradition. I don’t consider myself a religious person today. I believe in living life to the fullest. I try to live mindfully and to treat others and myself well. I believe in the power of love and in the importance of exploring the world around us and of speaking honestly about what we find.

[Mother Teresa image via Picsdrive]