The Darkness That Engulfed Argentina
As Pope John Paul II’s life ebbed away, speculation about the candidates likely to succeed him grew, and the name Bergoglio held a prominent place in nearly all the forecasts of the specialized press. Around that time, a newspaper accusation published a few years earlier in Buenos Aires, about the cardinal’s supposedly compromising role during Argentina’s military dictatorship, was once again bandied about. Indeed, on the eve of the conclave that was to elect the successor of the Polish pontiff, a copy of an article containing the accusation was e-mailed to the voting cardinals with the aim of jeopardizing the Argentine cardinal’s chances.
The article alleged that the cardinal was partly responsible for the 1976 kidnapping of two Jesuit priests who were working in a shantytown in the city’s Flores district, two months after the coup d’état. According to this version, Bergoglio—who at the time was the provincial superior of the Company of Jesus in Argentina—asked Father Orlando Yorio and Father Francisco Jalics to give up their pastoral work in the slum district and, as they refused to do so, informed the military that the priests were no longer under the Church’s protection, thereby leaving the way clear for their kidnapping, and thus putting their lives at risk.
The cardinal never spoke out in response to the accusation, nor did he ever refer to other accusations from the same source regarding alleged connections with members of the military junta (nor, in general, did he publicly discuss his stance during the dictatorship). Considering the goal of our interviews, however, he acknowledged that the subject could not be avoided and agreed to give his version of the facts and of the role he took on during the period of darkness that engulfed Argentina. “If I said nothing at the time, it was so as not to dance to anyone’s tune, not because I had anything to hide,” he stated.
Your Eminence, you let slip earlier that during the dictatorship you hid people who were being persecuted. How did you do that? How many did you protect?
I hid some people at the Jesuit Colegio Máximo in San Miguel, in greater Buenos Aires, where I lived. I don’t remember exactly how many, but a few. After the death of Monsignor Enrique Angelelli—the bishop of La Rioja who was known for his commitment to the poor—I sheltered three seminarians, theology students, from his diocese, in the Colegio Máximo. They weren’t hidden, but they were looked after, protected.
In the small bus on his way to La Rioja to take part in a tribute to Angelelli on the thirtieth anniversary of his death, the bishop of Bariloche, Fernando Maletti, met one of those three priests, who is now living in Villa Eloisa, in the province of Santa Fe. Maletti didn’t know who he was, but when they got talking, the priest told him that when he and the other two priests were at the Colegio Máximo they used to see people coming to do long, twenty-day retreats, and that after a while they realized the so-called retreats were a screen for hiding people. Maletti told me this later and said he hadn’t known anything about it, and that we ought to spread the news.
Apart from hiding people, did you do anything else?
I once smuggled a young man out of the country via Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil. He looked quite a bit like me, carried my identity card, was wearing priest’s clothing, with the clerical collar, and in that way I managed to save his life. I did what I could for my age and, with the few contacts I had, to plead for people who had been kidnapped. I got to meet with General Jorge Videla and Admiral Emilio Massera twice. In one of my attempts to talk to Videla, I managed to find out which military chaplain celebrated the Mass and persuaded him to say he was sick and to send me in his place. I remember that I celebrated Mass in the residence of the commander in chief of the army, before the whole Videla family, one Saturday afternoon. Afterward, I asked Videla if I could have a word with him, with the intention of finding out where the arrested priests were being held. I didn’t go to any detention centers, except once, when I went to an air base near San Miguel, in the neighboring district of José C. Paz, to try to ascertain what had happened to a young boy.
Is there any case that you particularly remember?
I remember meeting one woman who was brought to me by Esther Balestrino de Careaga, who, as I mentioned earlier, was my boss at the laboratory and who taught me so much about politics; she was later kidnapped and murdered, and is now buried in the city’s church of Santa Cruz. The woman who came to see me, from Avellaneda, in greater Buenos Aires, had two sons, who had been married only two or three years. Both were communist militant worker delegates who had been kidnapped. She was a widow, and her sons were all she had left. How she cried! It was a scene I will never forget. I made some inquiries but got nowhere, and I often reproach myself for not having done more.
Was there any case that had a happy ending?
I recall the case of a young catechist who had been kidnapped and on whose behalf I was asked to intercede. In this case, too, I had little chance of success and very little influence. I don’t know if my inquiries had anything to do with it, but the fact is, thank God, the boy was released shortly afterward. His family was overjoyed! That is why I say again: After something like that, how can one not understand the reaction of so many mothers who went through a terrible ordeal, but, unlike this case, never saw their children again?
What action did you take with regard to the kidnapping of the priests Father Yorio and Father Jalics?
To answer that, I must start by saying that they were planning to set up a religious congregation, and they gave the first draft of the Rules to Monsignors Eduardo Pironio, Vicente Zazpe, and Mario José Serra. I still have the copy they gave me. The superior general of the Jesuits, who then was Father Pedro Arrupe, told them they had to choose between the community they were living in and the Company of Jesus, and ordered them to move to a different community. As they persisted in their project and the group broke up, they asked to leave the Company. It was a long, internal process that lasted more than a year. It was not a hasty decision of mine. When Yorio’s resignation was accepted, along with that of Father Luis Dourrón, who was working with them—Jalics’s couldn’t be accepted, as he had taken the solemn vow; only the pope could accede to the request—it was March 1976, the nineteenth, to be exact, that is, five days before the government of Isabel Perón was overthrown. In view of the rumors of an imminent coup d’état, I told them to be very careful. I remember I offered them the chance to come and live in the Company’s provincial house, in the interests of their safety.
Were they in danger simply because they were working in a shantytown?
Yes. They lived in the so-called Rivadavia quarter in the Bajo Flores district. I had never believed they were involved in “subversive activities,” as their persecutors maintained, and they truly weren’t. But because of their proximity to some priests in the shantytowns, they were too exposed to the witch-hunt paranoia. Since they stayed in that neighborhood, Yorio and Jalics were kidnapped when the area was combed. Dourrón escaped because when the operation took place he was cycling around town and, seeing all the commotion, rode away down Varela Street.
Fortunately, they were released some time later, first of all, because they could not be accused of anything, and, second, because we wasted no time. The very night I learned they had been kidnapped, I set the ball rolling. When I said I had met with Videla twice and with Massera twice, it was because of the kidnapping of these priests.
According to the accusation, Yorio and Jalics thought that you, too, considered them subversive, at least a little, and that you harassed them somewhat because of their progressive ideas.
I will not kowtow to those who want to pin me down like that. I’ve just explained, in all sincerity, my views regarding the work of those priests and the role I assumed following their kidnapping. Jalics comes to see me whenever he’s in Buenos Aires. Once we even celebrated Mass together. He comes to give courses with my permission. He had an opportunity once when the Holy See offered to accept his resignation, but he decided to continue in the Company of Jesus. I repeat: I did not throw them out of the congregation, nor did I want them to be left unprotected.
In addition, the accusation says that three years later, when Jalics was living in Germany and Argentina was still under the dictatorship, he asked you to intercede for him with the Foreign Ministry to get his passport renewed without his having to come back to Argentina, but that although you saw to the formalities, you in fact advised the civil servants in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship not to approve the application because of the priest’s subversive background . . .
That is not quite accurate. It is true that Jalics—who was born in Hungary but was an Argentine citizen with an Argentine passport—wrote to me while I was still the provincial superior to ask me to do this for him because he had a justified fear of coming to Argentina and being arrested again. So I sent the authorities a written request—not mentioning the real reason, but stating that the trip was very expensive—for him to be able to get it seen to at the embassy in Bonn. I delivered the letter by hand, and the civil servant to whom I gave it asked me what had caused Jalics to leave so suddenly. “He and his friend were accused of being guerrilla fighters, but they had nothing to do with any such thing,” I answered. “Give me the letter, then, and you’ll get the reply in due course,” he said.
What happened after that?
They denied the request, of course. The author of the accusation against me went through the file of the secretary of worship, yet all he mentioned was that he found a scrap of paper on which that civil servant had noted that he had spoken to me and I had told him they were accused of being guerrilla fighters. In short, he had made a note of that part of the conversation but not the other part, where I said that the priests were not involved in anything like that. Also, the author of the accusation omits the fact that I wrote the letter making the request; I was the one sticking my neck out for Jalics.
It was also mentioned that you were instrumental in Admiral Massera’s being awarded the honorary doctorate by the Jesuit-founded Universidad del Salvador.
I believe it was a professorship, not a doctorate. I was not the sponsor. I was invited to the event, but I did not attend. And when I found out that a group had politicized the university, I went to a Civil Association meeting and asked them to leave, despite the fact that the university no longer belonged to the Company of Jesus and that I had no authority other than that of being a priest. I say this because I then became linked to that political group. Anyway, if I respond to every accusation made, I get drawn into the game. Not long ago I was in a synagogue taking part in a ceremony. I prayed a lot and, while praying, I heard a phrase from one of the books of wisdom that had slipped my mind: “Lord, may I bear mockery in silence.” It gave me much peace and joy.
• • •
When the young Father Jorge Bergoglio knocked on her office door, Dr. Alicia Oliveira thought it would be a meeting like so many others she used to hold as a criminal law judge in the mid-1970s. It never occurred to her that she and the priest would get along so well that they would become firm friends, a friendship that would eventually make her a qualified witness of Bergoglio’s actions during the military dictatorship. Oliveira has a long track record as a human rights activist, a role she embraced ever since she started as a criminal lawyer. After the military coup, this activism cost her the post of magistrate; she was among the first to be dismissed.
She signed hundreds of habeas corpus writs for illegal arrests and missing persons during the last dictatorship, worked as a lawyer, and formed the first steering committee of the Social and Legal Studies Center (CELS, or Centro de Estudios Sociales y Legales), one of the most emblematic NGOs fighting human rights violations.
With the return of democracy she held several posts, including that of member of the National Constitution Convention of 1994 (elected as a member of the list of the Frente Grande, or Broad Front, a center-left dissident Peronist group); ombudswoman of the city of Buenos Aires from 1998 to 2003; and then—under the presidency of Néstor Kirchner—Special Human Rights Representative for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a post she held for two years until her retirement.
“I remember that Bergoglio came to see me at the court about a problem having to do with a third party, sometime in 1974 or 1975. We got to talking, and there was an empathy between us that led to further conversations. In one of our chats we talked about the imminent threat of a coup. He was the provincial superior of the Jesuits and was probably a lot better informed than I was. In the press they were even shuffling the names of future ministers. The newspaper La Razón had published that José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz was going to be minister of the economy,” recalls Oliveira, adding that “Bergoglio was very concerned because of what he sensed was going to happen and, as he knew about my human rights commitments, he feared for my life. He even suggested that I go and live in the Colegio Máximo for a while. But I didn’t accept his offer and answered with a silly witticism that was a most unfortunate turn of phrase in view of everything that would happen later: ‘I’d rather be captured by the military than have to go and live with priests.’”
However, the magistrate did decide to take some precautions. She told the court clerk, Dr. Carmen Argibay, whom she trusted completely—and who was eventually made a minister of the nation’s Supreme Court of Justice, at Kirchner’s proposal—that she was thinking of leaving in Argibay’s care the two children she had at that time, so that she could go into hiding, for fear of being put under military arrest. In the end she decided not to do that, nor was she taken prisoner. Argibay, however, was arrested the very day of the coup. Oliveira desperately tried to find out where she was being held, until the jail in Devoto informed her she was there, but neither she nor the prisoner herself ever knew why Argibay was imprisoned for several months.
After the fall of Isabel Perón’s government, Oliveira and Bergoglio met more frequently. “In our talks I could see that his fears were growing, especially with regard to the Jesuit priests in the settlement,” says Oliveira. “I think that Bergoglio and I began to realize early on what the military were like. Their penchant for the friend/enemy logic, and their inability to discern between political, social, or religious activism and armed conflict . . . so very dangerous. And we were painfully aware of the risks being run by those who were going into the lower-class districts. And not only them, but also the people who lived there and who could catch it on the rebound.”
She remembers that she begged a friend of hers, a girl who used to go and teach catechism at the settlement—and who was not an activist at all—not to go back there. “I warned her that the soldiers didn’t understand, and that whenever they saw someone in the district who didn’t live there, they assumed they were an international Marxist-Leninist terrorist.” It took a lot to make the girl understand. Finally, she left, and years later acknowledged that the advice had saved her life. “But others who stayed were not so lucky, and that’s why Bergoglio was so worried about the priests in the shantytown and wanted them out of there,” she affirms.
Oliveira remembers that Father Jorge was not merely concerned about locating Yorio and Jalics and getting them released; he also endeavored to find out where many other detainees were being held, and to smuggle others out of the country, like that young man who resembled him and to whom he gave his identity card. “I used to go to the Saint Ignatius retreat house, and I recall that many of the meals served there were farewell dinners for people whom Father Jorge smuggled out of the country,” Oliveira says.
Bergoglio also managed to hide one family’s book collection that included works by Marxist authors. “One day Esther Balestrino de Careaga called him, asking him to come to her house to give a relative last rites, which surprised him because they weren’t religious, but when he got there, she explained that the real reason was to ask him to take her daughter’s books, as her daughter was being watched. The daughter was later kidnapped and, eventually, released—unlike what was to happen to her,” Oliveira remembers.
With regard to the stance of the Universidad del Salvador during the last dictatorship, and Bergoglio’s role there, Oliveira is adamant that what she saw while at that center of higher studies could in no way be considered collusion with the dictatorship; far from it. “I don’t know what happened at the university, but many of us sought shelter there,” she stresses. She shared the professorship of criminal law with Eugenio Zaffaroni (someone else who was dismissed by the dictatorship but who, being a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, also reached the Supreme Court, promoted by Kirchner). And in her classes she would speak freely. “When I used to explain the law of trial by ordeal (the terrible ordeals imposed in the Middle Ages to establish someone’s guilt or innocence), the students would say it was horrendous, and then I would tell them what was going on in our country; Bergoglio used to say that the soldiers would be coming to pick me up with the Green Falcon,” she recalls, mentioning a symbol of state terrorism.
With her co-professor, Oliveira experienced an episode that in her view clearly illustrates Bergoglio’s position regarding the dictatorship. Toward the end of the military government, in the preelectoral stage, Zaffaroni learned that the jurist, Charles Moyer—former clerk of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights—wanted to visit the country to convince the candidates how important it was for Argentina to adhere to the Inter-American Human Rights Convention (agreement of San José de Costa Rica). Since at the time Moyer was working at the Organization of American States, headquartered in Washington, D.C., the secretary-general, the Argentine Alejandro Orfila, on learning of his intentions, threatened to dismiss him if Moyer traveled to Buenos Aires. “Orfila had a lot of vested interests in the dictatorship,” Oliveira points out. So Zaffaroni asked her what they could do to get Moyer over to Argentina, albeit on false pretenses. Oliveira thinks back: “What did I do? I appealed to Father Jorge, of course, who told me not to worry. Shortly afterward he dropped by with a letter in which the university invited Moyer to come and give a talk on the procedures of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights . . . a dreadfully boring subject! Professors of international law were convened for the occasion. Bergoglio asked me not to go near the place. The gringo didn’t know what to talk about. Later, we discreetly took him to see the candidates. It was pathetic: hardly anyone had heard about the San José de Costa Rica agreement. On his return, Moyer sent Bergoglio a letter thanking him. And Raúl Alfonsín, as soon as he took office, ratified the agreement.”
Nevertheless, Oliveira—herself critical of the actions of many bishops during the dictatorship—acknowledges that there will always be some doubt about whether the members of the clergy who personally took care of victims of the illegal oppression followed the best strategy in prioritizing discreet action over publicly denouncing the regime. Was it the best thing for the safety of the victims? Could a superior of a religious community “take it upon himself” and stick his neck out? “The truth is I don’t know what would have been best, or how the different echelons of the Church work.” But she believes that the legitimate doubts—arising, often, from the perspective that comes with the passage of time—concerning the path that was taken do not invalidate conduct such as Bergoglio’s. They certainly don’t leave room for unfounded accusations.
That is why Oliveira considers the act of e-mailing to the cardinals who were preparing to elect the successor to John Paul II the article denouncing Bergoglio’s alleged collusion with the dictatorship a “trashy intelligence operation.” Especially because—she affirms—the journalist who wrote it “had written another article a few years ago in which he said very different things, in which he told the truth.”
She does, however, admit to feeling relieved when she learned that Bergoglio had not been elected pope in the 2005 conclave. “The truth is that if they had elected him, I would have had a sense of loss, as he is almost like a brother to me, and, besides, we Argentines need him.”