Pope Francis

[Jan Klimkowski]

Lest we forget the shameful history of the Vatican and numerous Catholic priests in running the ratlines which enabled Nazi war criminals to escape from Europe to countries such as..... Argentina.

The Catholic Church and right-wing miltary dictatorships have been natural bedfellows for at least a century.

In South America, this was challenged by Liberation Theology.

And so the cardinals and the bishops betrayed the priests who thought Jesus was on the side of the poor, and grassed them out to horror, torture, murder.

At the hands of fascists.

The Disappeared.

Early Spanish ratlines

The origins of the first ratlines are connected to various developments in Vatican-Argentine relations before and during World War II.[2] As early as 1942, Monsignor Luigi Maglione contacted Ambassador Llobet, inquiring as to the "willingness of the government of the Argentine Republic to apply its immigration law generously, in order to encourage at the opportune moment European Catholic immigrants to seek the necessary land and capital in our country".[3] Afterwards, a German priest, Anton Weber, the head of the Rome-based Society of Saint Raphael, traveled to Portugal, continuing to Argentina, to lay the groundwork for future Catholic immigration, this was to be a route which fascist exiles would exploit - without the knowledge of the Catholic Church.[3] According to historian Michael Phayer, "this was the innocent origin of what would become the Vatican ratline".[3]

Spain, not Rome, was the "first center of ratline activity that facilitated the escape of Nazi fascists", although the exodus itself was planned within the Vatican.[4] Charles Lescat, a French member of Action Française (an organization suppressed by Pius XI and rehabilitated by Pius XII), and Pierre Daye, a Belgian with contacts in the Spanish government, were among the primary organizers.[5] Lescat and Daye were the first able to flee Europe, with the help of Argentine cardinal Antonio Caggiano.[5]

By 1946, there were probably hundreds of war criminals in Spain, and thousands of former Nazis and fascists.[6] According to US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, Vatican cooperation in turning over asylum-seekers was "negligible".[6] According to Phayer, Pius XII "preferred to see fascist war criminals on board ships sailing to the New World rather than seeing them rotting in POW camps in zonal Germany".[7] Unlike the Vatican emigration operation in Italy, centered on Vatican City, the ratlines of Spain, although "fostered by the Vatican" were relatively independent of the hierarchy of the Vatican Emigration Bureau.[8]
The Roman ratlines
Early effortsBishop Hudal

Bishop Alois Hudal was rector of the Pontificio Istituto Teutonico Santa Maria dell'Anima in Rome, a seminary for Austrian and German priests, and "Spiritual Director of the German People resident in Italy".[9] After the end of the war in Italy, Hudal became active in ministering to German-speaking prisoners of war and internees then held in camps throughout Italy. In December 1944 the Vatican Secretariat of State received permission to appoint a representative to "visit the German-speaking civil internees in Italy", a job assigned to Hudal.

Hudal used this position to aid the escape of wanted Nazi war criminals, including Franz Stangl, commanding officer of Treblinka, Gustav Wagner, commanding officer of Sobibor, Alois Brunner, responsible for the Drancy internment camp near Paris and in charge of deportations in Slovakia to German concentration camps, and Adolf Eichmann[10] a fact about which he was later unashamedly open. Some of these wanted men were being held in internment camps: generally without identity papers, they would be enrolled in camp registers under false names. Other Nazis were in hiding in Italy, and sought Hudal out as his role in assisting escapes became known on the Nazi grapevine.[11]:289

In his memoirs Hudal said of his actions "I thank God that He [allowed me] to visit and comfort many victims in their prisons and concentration camps and to help them escape with false identity papers." [12] He explained that in his eyes:

"The Allies' War against Germany was not a crusade, but the rivalry of economic complexes for whose victory they had been fighting. This so-called business ... used catchwords like democracy, race, religious liberty and Christianity as a bait for the masses. All these experiences were the reason why I felt duty bound after 1945 to devote my whole charitable work mainly to former National Socialists and Fascists, especially to so-called 'war criminals'."

According to Mark Aarons and John Loftus in their book Unholy Trinity,[13] Hudal was the first Catholic priest to dedicate himself to establishing escape routes. Aarons and Loftus claim that Hudal provided the objects of his charity with money to help them escape, and more importantly with false papers including identity documents issued by the Vatican Refugee Organisation (Commissione Pontificia d'Assistenza).

These Vatican papers were not full passports, and not in themselves enough to gain passage overseas. They were, rather, the first stop in a paper trailthey could be used to obtain a displaced person passport from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which in turn could be used to apply for visas. In theory the ICRC would perform background checks on passport applicants, but in practice the word of a priest or particularly a bishop would be good enough. According to statements collected by Gitta Sereny from a senior official of the Rome branch of the ICRC,[11]:316-17 Hudal could also use his position as a bishop to request papers from the ICRC "made out according to his specifications". Sereny's sources also revealed an active illicit trade in stolen and forged ICRC papers in Rome at this time.

According to declassified US intelligence reports, Hudal was not the only priest helping Nazi escapees at this time. In the "La Vista report" declassified in 1984, Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) operative Vincent La Vista told how he had easily arranged for two bogus Hungarian refugees to get false ICRC documents with the help of a letter from a Father Joseph Gallov. Gallov, who ran a Vatican-sponsored charity for Hungarian refugees, asked no questions and wrote a letter to his "personal contact in the International Red Cross, who then issued the passports".[14]
The San Girolamo ratline

According to Aarons and Loftus, Hudal's private operation was small scale compared to what came later. The major Roman ratline was operated by a small, but influential network of Croatian priests, members of the Franciscan order, led by Father Krunoslav Draganović. Draganović organized a highly sophisticated chain with headquarters at the San Girolamo degli Illirici Seminary College in Rome, but with links from Austria to the final embarcation point in the port of Genoa. The ratline initially focused on aiding members of the Croatian Ustashe movement, most notably the Croat wartime dictator Ante Pavelić.[15]

Priests active in the chain included: Fr. Vilim Cecelja, former Deputy Military Vicar to the Ustashe, based in Austria where many Ustashe and Nazi refugees remained in hiding; Fr. Dragutin Kamber, based at San Girolamo; Fr. Dominik Mandić, an official Vatican representative at San Girolamo and also "General Economist" or treasurer of the Franciscan order - who used this position to put the Franciscan press at the ratline's disposal; and Monsignor Karlo Petranović, based in Genoa. Vilim would make contact with those hiding in Austria and help them across the border to Italy; Kamber, Mandić and Draganović would find them lodgings, often in the monastery itself, while they arranged documentation; finally Draganović would phone Petranović in Genoa with the number of required berths on ships leaving for South America (see below).

The operation of the Draganović ratline was an open secret among the intelligence and diplomatic communities in Rome. As early as August 1945, Allied commanders in Rome were asking questions about the use of San Girolamo as a "haven" for Ustashe.[16] A year later, a US State Department report of 12 July 1946 lists nine war criminals, including Albanians and Montenegrins as well as Croats, plus others "not actually sheltered in the COLLEGIUM ILLIRICUM [i.e., San Girolamo degli Illirici] but who otherwise enjoy Church support and protection."[17] The British envoy to the Holy See, Francis Osborne, asked Domenico Tardini, a high-ranking Vatican official, for a permission that would have allowed British military police to raid ex-territorial Vatican Institutions in Rome. Tardini declined and denied that the church sheltered war criminals.[citation needed]

In February 1947 CIC Special Agent Robert Clayton Mudd reported ten members of Pavelić's Ustasha cabinet living either in San Girolamo or in the Vatican itself. Mudd had infiltrated an agent into the monastery and confirmed that it was "honeycombed with cells of Ustashe operatives" guarded by "armed youths". Mudd also reported:

"It was further established that these Croats travel back and forth from the Vatican several times a week in a car with a chauffeur whose license plate bears the two initials CD, "Corpo Diplomatico". It issues forth from the Vatican and discharges its passengers inside the Monastery of San Geronimo. Subject to diplomatic immunity it is impossible to stop the car and discover who are its passengers."[18]

Mudd's conclusion was the following:

"DRAGANOVIC's sponsorship of these Croat Ustashes definitely links him up with the plan of the Vatican to shield these ex-Ustasha nationalists until such time as they are able to procure for them the proper documents to enable them to go to South America. The Vatican, undoubtedly banking on the strong anti-Communist feelings of these men, is endeavoring to infiltrate them into South America in any way possible to counteract the spread of Red doctrine. It has been reliably reported, for example that Dr. VRANCIC has already gone to South America and that Ante PAVELIC and General KREN are scheduled for an early departure to South America through Spain. All these operations are said to have been negotiated by DRAGANOVIC because of his influence in the Vatican."

The existence of Draganović's ratline has been confirmed by a Vatican historian, Fr. Robert Graham: "I've no doubt that Draganović was extremely active in syphoning off his Croatian Ustashe friends." However, Graham insisted that Draganović was not officially sanctioned in this by his superiors: "Just because he's a priest doesn't mean he represents the Vatican. It was his own operation."[19] On four occasions the Vatican intervened on behalf of interned Ustasha prisoners. The Secretariat of State asked the U.K. and U.S. government to release Croatian POWs from British internment camps in Italy. The presence of some pro-Utashe clergy at this time is not surprising, but the Vatican itself condemned war crimes committed by the Utashe, as well as the Communists.
US intelligence involvement

If at first US intelligence officers had been mere observers of the Draganović ratline, this changed in the summer of 1947. A now declassified US Army intelligence report from 1950 sets out in detail the history of the people smuggling operation in the three years to follow.[20] According to the report, from this point on US forces themselves had begun to use Draganović's established network to evacuate its own "visitors". As the report put it, these were "visitors who had been in the custody of the 430th CIC and completely processed in accordance with current directives and requirements, and whose continued residence in Austria constituted a security threat as well as a source of possible embarrassment to the Commanding General of USFA, since the Soviet Command had become aware that their presence in US Zone of Austria and in some instances had requested the return of these persons to Soviet custody".[20]

These were suspected war criminals from areas occupied by the Red Army which the US was obliged to hand over for trial to the Soviets. The US reputedly was reluctant to do so, partly due to a belief[citation needed] that fair trial could hardly be expected in the USSR (see Operation Keelhaul), and at the same time, their desire to make use of Nazi scientists and other resources.[citation needed] The deal with Draganović involved getting the visitors to Rome: "Dragonovich [sic] handled all phases of the operation after the defectees arrived in Rome, such as the procurement of IRO Italian and South American documents, visas, stamps, arrangements for disposition, land or sea, and notification of resettlement committees in foreign lands".[20] United States intelligence used these methods in order to get important Nazi scientists and military strategists, to the extent they had not already been claimed by the Soviet Union, to their own centres of military science in the US. Many Nazi scientists were employed by the US, retrieved in Operation Paperclip.[citation needed]
The Argentine Connection

See also Juan Perón and the Jewish and German communities of Argentina

" In Nuremberg at that time something was taking place that I personally considered a disgrace and an unfortunate lesson for the future of humanity. I became certain that the Argentine people also considered the Nuremberg process a disgrace, unworthy of the victors, who behaved as if they hadn't been victorious. Now we realize that they [the Allies] deserved to lose the war. (Argentine president Juan Perón on the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals.)[21] "

In his 2002 book The Real Odessa[21] Argentine researcher Uki Goñi used new access to the country's archives to show that Argentine diplomats and intelligence officers had, on Perón's instructions, vigorously encouraged Nazi and Fascist war criminals to make their home in Argentina. According to Goñi, the Argentines not only collaborated with Draganović's ratline, they set up further ratlines of their own running through Scandinavia, Switzerland and Belgium.[citation needed]

According to Goñi, Argentina's first move into Nazi smuggling was in January 1946, when Argentine bishop Antonio Caggiano, bishop of Rosario and leader of the Argentine chapter of Catholic Action flew with Bishop Agustín Barrére to Rome where Caggiano was due to be anointed Cardinal. While in Rome the Argentine bishops met with French Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, where they passed on a message (recorded in Argentina's diplomatic archives) that "the Government of the Argentine Republic was willing to receive French persons, whose political attitude during the recent war would expose them, should they return to France, to harsh measures and private revenge". Over the spring of 1946 a number of French war criminals, fascists and Vichy officials made it from Italy to Argentina in the same way: they were issued passports by the Rome ICRC office; these were then stamped with Argentine tourist visas (the need for health certificates and return tickets was waived on Caggiano's recommendation). The first documented case of a French war criminal arriving in Buenos Aires was Emile Dewoitine later sentenced in absentia to 20 years hard labour. He sailed first class on the same ship back with Cardinal Caggiano.[22]

Shortly after this Argentinian Nazi smuggling became institutionalised, according to Goñi, when Perón's new government of February 1946 appointed anthropologist Santiago Peralta as Immigration Commissioner and former Ribbentrop agent Ludwig Freude as his intelligence chief. Goñi argues that these two then set up a "rescue team" of secret service agents and immigration "advisors", many of whom were themselves European war-criminals, with Argentine citizenship and employment.[23]
ODESSA and the Gehlen Org
Main article: ODESSA

The Italian and Argentine ratlines have only been confirmed relatively recently, mainly due to research in recently declassified archives. Until the work of Aarons and Loftus, and of Uki Goñi (2002), a common view was that ex-Nazis themselves, organised in secret networks, ran the escape routes alone. The most famous such network is ODESSA (Organisation of former SS members), founded in 1946 according to Simon Wiesenthal, which included SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny and Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks and in Argentina, Rodolfo Freude. Alois Brunner, former commandant of Drancy internment camp near Paris, escaped to Rome, then Syria, by ODESSA. (Brunner is thought to be the highest-ranking Nazi war criminal still alive as of 2007). Persons claiming to represent ODESSA claimed responsibility in a note for the 9 July 1979 car bombing in France aimed at Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld.[citation needed] According to Paul Manning (1980), "eventually, over 10,000 former German military made it to South America along escape routes ODESSA and Deutsche Hilfsverein ..."[24]

Simon Wiesenthal, who advised Frederick Forsyth on the novel/filmscript The Odessa File which brought the name to public attention, also names other Nazi escape organisations such as Spinne ("Spider") and Sechsgestirn ("Constellation of Six"). Wiesenthal describes these immediately after the war as Nazi cells based in areas of Austria where many Nazis had retreated and gone to ground. Wiesenthal claimed that the ODESSA network shepherded escapees to the Catholic ratlines in Rome (although he mentions only Hudal, not Draganović); or through a second route through France and into Francoist Spain.[25]

ODESSA was supported by the Gehlen Org, which employed many former Nazi party members, and was headed by Reinhard Gehlen, a former German Army intelligence officer employed post-war by the CIA. The Gehlen Org became the nucleus of the BND German intelligence agency, directed by Reinhard Gehlen from its 1956 creation until 1968.[citation needed]
In popular culture

A ratline operated by die Spinne in Spain is the subject of the 1966 Nick Carter novel Web of Spies.
Former Nazi Germany officers working for the US are featured in the television movie The Belarus File (1985), an adaptation of John Loftus's book The Belarus Secret.
Former Nazis living in Rio de Janeiro are infiltrated by the daughter of a former Nazi in the film Notorious (1946) directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
In the last days of World War II, Adolf Hitler fakes suicide and attempts to escape Europe with the help of a Roman ratline in Joseph Heywood's novel The Berkut.
Former Nazis living in South America are killed by Erik Lensherr (Magneto) in the film X-Men: First Class (2011) directed by Matthew Vaughn.
Former Nazis that form the terrorist group Millennium in the anime series Hellsing escape to South America, enabling them to fight for another decade.

See also

Ex-Nazi
die Spinne
Aunt Anna's, a safe house, in Merano, Italy, often used by Nazi & SS members

References

^ Phayer, 2008, p. 173.
^ Phayer, 2008, pp. 173-79
^ a b c Phayer, 2008, p. 179
^ Phayer, 2008, p. 180.
^ a b Phayer, 2008, p. 182.
^ a b Phayer, 2008, p. 183.
^ Phayer, 2008, p. 187.
^ Phayer, 2008, p. 188
^ Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and the Swiss Bankers (St Martins Press 1991, revised 1998), p. 36
^ Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust
^ a b Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness, Picador, 1977. Her account comes from testimony of Nazi war criminals helped by Hudal, such as Franz Stangl, Commandant of Treblinka extermination camp.
^ Hudal Römische Tagebücher (English translation quoted in Aarons and Loftus, p. 37)
^ Aarons and Loftus, chapter 2, "Bishop Hudal and the First Wave"
^ Aarons and Loftus, pp. 43-45
^ Aarons and Loftus, chapter 5, "Ratline"
^ US Army File: Rome Area Allied Command to the CIC, 8 August 1945 Published on the website of the Jasenovac Committee of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
^ State Department File: Vatican Protection of Jugoslav War Criminals, 12 July 1946 Published on the website of the Jasenovac Committee of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
^ Declassified CIA File: Background Report on Father Krunoslav Draganović, 12 February 1947 Published on the website of the Jasenovac Committee of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
^ Aarons and Loftus, p. 89
^ a b c "History of the Italian Rat Line" (10 April 1950), document signed by "IB Operating Officer" Paul E. Lyon, 430th Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), Headquarters of the US Forces in Austria. Vide Jasenovac archive.
^ a b From the 'Perón tapes' he recorded the year before his death, published in Yo, Domingo Perón, Luca de Tena et al.; this translation as quoted in Uki Goñi's The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina, Granta (revised edition) 2003, p. 100
^ Goñi, The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina, Granta (revised edition) 2003, pp. 9698
^ Goñi, chapter 8
^ Paul Manning, Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile (Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1980, ISBN 0-8184-0309-8 (page 181)
^ Simon Wiesenthal, Justice not Vengeance, George Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1989 - particularly chapter 6, "Odessa"

Sources

Aarons, Mark, and Loftus, John. 1991. Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and the Swiss Bankers. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991; revised, 1998.
Goñi, Uki. 2003 (revised). The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina. London: Granta.
Graham, Robert, and Alvarez, David. 1998. Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage against the Vatican, 1939-1945. London: Frank Cass.
Phayer, Michael. 2008. Pius XII, The Holocaust, and the Cold War. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34930-9.
Sereny, Gitta. 1977. Into That Darkness. London: Picador.
Steinacher, Gerald. 2006. The Cape of Last Hope: The Flight of Nazi War Criminals through Italy to South America, in Eisterer, Klaus; Bischof, Günter (ed.) (2006). Transatlantic Relations: Austria and Latin America in the 19th and 20th Century (Transatlantica 1), pp. 20324. New Brunswick: Transatlantica.
Wiesenthal, Simon. 1989. Justice not Vengeance. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Loftus, John. 2010. America's Nazi Secret: An Insider's History . Waterwille: (Trine Day). ISBN 978-1936296040.
Simpson, Christopher. 1988. Blowback: The First Full Account of America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Disastrous Effect on The cold war, Our Domestic and Foreign Policy. New York: (Grove/Atlantic). ISBN 978-0020449959.
Richard Breitman, Norman J.W. Goda, Timothy Naftali, Robert Wolfe 2005. U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521617949.
Steinacher, Gerald 2012 (Reprint edition). "Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's Henchmen Fled Justice". Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199642458.

[Jan Klimkowski]

The official narrative being promulgated is that Bergoglio hid radical priests from the military during Argentina's Dirty War.

The following from Magda's earlier post puts a different light on this official narrative:

The extent of the church's complicity in the dark deeds was excellently set out by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina's most notable journalists, in his book El Silencio (Silence). He recounts how the Argentinian navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, hid from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission the dictatorship's political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them in nothing less than his holiday home in an island called El Silencio in the River Plate.

If true, then Bergoglio actually provided a prison in which radical priests and political dissidents were hidden by the military from visiting human rights observers, before likely going to their grisly fate.

El Silencio.

El Diablo.

[Lauren Johnson]

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: For more on the new pope, we turn now to one of Argentina's leading investigative journalists, Horacio Verbitsky, who has written extensively about the career of Cardinal Bergoglio and his actions during the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. During that time, up to 30,000 people were kidnapped and killed. A 2005 lawsuit accused Jorge Bergoglio of being connected to the 1976 kidnappings of two Jesuit priests, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics. The lawsuit was filed after the publication of Verbitsky's book, The Silence: From Paul VI to Bergoglio: The Secret Relations Between the Church and the ESMA. ESMA refers to the former navy school that was turned into a detention center where people were tortured by the military dictatorship. The new pope has denied the charges. He twice invoked his right under Argentine law to refuse to appear in open court to testify about the allegations. When he eventually did testify in 2010, human rights activists characterized his answers as evasive.
AMY GOODMAN: Horacio Verbitsky joins us on the phone now from his home in Buenos Aires, an investigative journalist for the newspaper Página/12; Page/12, it's called in English. He is also head of the Center for Legal and Social Studies, an Argentine human rights organization.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! I wanted to just begin by you laying out for us what you believe is important to understand about the new pope, Pope Francis.
HORACIO VERBITSKY: The main thing to understand about Francis I is that he's a conservative populist, in the same style that John Paul II was. He's a man of strong conservative positions in doctrine questions, but with a touch for popular taste. He preaches in rail stations, in the streets. He goes to the quarters, the poor quarters of the city to pray. He doesn't wait the people going into the church; he goes for them. But his message is absolutely conservative. He was opposed to abortion, to the egalitarian matrimony law. He launched a crusade against the evil when Congress was passing this law, and in the very same style that John Paul II. This is what I consider the main feature on the new pope.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, now, Horacio Verbitsky, that would be true of many of the cardinals elevated during the period of John Paul and now also of Benedict XVI, this basic conservatism. But in the case of Bergoglio, there's also the issue, as you have documented and manyand several other journalists in Argentina, of his particular role or accusations about his involvement in the dirty wars in Argentina. Could you talk about that and some of the things thatbecause you've been a leading investigative reporter uncovering the relations between the church and the government in terms of the dirty wars?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: Of course. He was accused by two Jesuit priests of having surrendered them to the military. They were a group of Jesuits that were under Bergoglio's direction. He was the provincial superior of the order in Argentina, being very, very young. He was the younger provincial Jesuit in history; at 36 years, he was provincial. During a period of great political activity in the Jesuits' company, he stimulated the social work of the Jesuits. But when the military coup overthrow the Isabel Perón government, he was in touch with the military that ousted this government and asked the Jesuits to stop their social work. And when they refused to do it, he stopped protecting them, and he let the military know that they were not more inside the protection of the Jesuits' company, and they were kidnapped. And they accuse him for this deed. He denies this. He said to me that he tried to get them free, that he talked with the former dictator, Videla, and with former dictator Massera to have them freed.
And during a long period, I heard two versions: the version of the two kidnapped priests that were released after six months of torture and captivity, and the version of Bergoglio. This was an issue divisive in the human rights movement to which I belong, because the president founding of CELS, Center for Legal and Social Studies, Emilio Mignone, said that Bergoglio was a accomplice of the military, and a lawyer of the CELS, Alicia Oliveira, that was a friend of Bergoglio, tell the other part of the story, that Bergoglio helped them. This was the twothe two versions.
But during the research for one of my books, I found documents in the archive of the foreign relations minister in Argentina, which, from my understanding, gave an end to the debate and show the double standard that Bergoglio used. The first document is a note in which Bergoglio asked the ministry tothe renewal of the passport of one of these two Jesuits that, after his releasing, was living in Germany, asking that the passport was renewed without necessity of this priest coming back to Argentina. The second document is a note from the officer that received the petition recommending to his superior, the minister, the refusal of the renewal of the passport. And the third document is a note from the same officer telling that these priests have links with subversionthat was the name that the military gave to all the people involved in opposition to the government, political or armed opposition to the militaryand that he was jailed in the mechanics school of the navy, and saying that this information was provided to the officer by Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio, provincial superior of the Jesuit company. This means, to my understanding, a double standard. He asked the passport given to the priest in a formal note with his signature, but under the table he said the opposite and repeated the accusations that produced the kidnapping of these priests.
AMY GOODMAN: And these priestscan you explain, Horacio, what happened to these two priests, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: Yes. Orlando, after his releasing, went to Rome.
AMY GOODMAN: How were they found?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: Sorry?
AMY GOODMAN: How were they found? In what condition were they? What had happened to them?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: Well, he was releasedboth of them were released, drugged, confused, transported by helicopter toin the outskirts of Buenos Aires, were abandoned, asleep by drugs, in very bad condition. They were tortured. They were interrogated. One of the interrogators had externally knowings about theological questions, that induced one of them, Orlando Yorio, to think that their own provincial, Bergoglio, had been involved in this interrogatory.
AMY GOODMAN: He said thathe said that Bergoglio himself had been part of thehis own interrogation, this Jesuit priest?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: He told me that he had the impression their own provincial, Bergoglio, was present during the interrogatory, which one of the interrogators had externally knowledge of theological questions. And when released, he went to Rome. He lived seven years in Rome, then come back to Argentina. And when coming back to Argentina, he was incardinated in the Quilmes diocesis in Great Buenos Aires, where the bishop was one of the leaders of the progressive branch of the Argentine church opposite to that of Bergoglio. And Orlando Yorio denounced Bergoglio. I received his testimony when Bergoglio was elected to the archbishop of Buenos Aires. And BergoglioI interviewed Bergoglio also, and he denied the charges, and he told me that he had defended them.
And Orlando Yorio got me in touch with Francisco Jalics, that was living in Germany. I talked with him, and he confirmed the story, but he didn't want to be mentioned in my piece, because he told me that he preferred to not remember this sad part of his life and to pardon. And he was for oblivion and pardon. That he was, during a lot of years, very resented against Bergoglio, but that he had decided to forgot and forget. And when I released the book with the story, one Argentine journalist working for a national agency, [inaudible], who has been a disciple of Jalics, talked with him and asked him for the story. And Jalics told him that he would not affirm, not deny the story.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: HoracioHoracio Verbitsky, I'd like to ask you about another priest who was involved in the dirty wars, Christian von Wernich, who was a former chaplain of the police department in Argentina and also later was convicted of being involved
HORACIO VERBITSKY: He was convictedhe was convicted, and he's in jail, in a common jail, but the Argentine church, during the tenure of Bergoglio, hasn't punished him, in canonical terms. He was convicted by the human justice, but by the church standards, he's always a priest. And this tells something about Bergoglio and the Argentine church also.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And von Wernich was involved in murders, tortures and kidnappings. Could you detail some of the crimes that he was convicted of committing?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: Bergoglio involved in the crimes of von Wernich?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: No, no, von Wernich. Von Wernich, I said.
HORACIO VERBITSKY: Oh, von Wernich was partwas active part in torture and killings, and he was convicted not as an accomplice, but as a participant in the crimes. He was present during the torture sessions, von Wernich. And there is not the just one chaplain; there are some others that are under trial in this moment. Chaplain Regueiro is under house arrest because he's an older man. A Chaplain Zitelli in Santa Fe province, for being present during torture sessions. So, there are a lot of them that were part of the dirty war.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to read, Horacio, a part of a State Department cable released by WikiLeaks that references, well, the Roman Catholic priest Christian von Wernich, who you were just talking about, convicted in 2007 of being an accomplice in several cases of murder, torture and illegal imprisonment in Argentina during the military dictatorship. It notes the conviction came, quote, "at a time when some observers consider Roman Catholic primate Cardinal Bergoglio to be a leader of the opposition to the Kirchner administration because of his comments about social issues, the Von Wernich case could also have the effect, some believe, of undermining the Church's (and, by extension, Cardinal Bergoglio's) moral authority or capacity to comment on political, social or economic questions," unquote. That was a State Department cable that was released by WikiLeaks. Horacio, could you respond?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: We can go attack this paper by parts. First of all, the State Department considered that Bergoglio was the chief of the position to the Kirchner government. And I agree with this statement. The State Department tells also that the conviction of Father von Wernich can be directed to undermine Bergoglio's position. This is not true, to my understanding. The conviction of Father von Wernich is a consequence of a trial that started much before the Kirchners arriving to power and has its own judicial logic and not a political timetable.
AMY GOODMAN: Horacio, are you still there?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: Sorry?
AMY GOODMAN: Ah, let me ask you a question. We thought we lost you for a minute. We're talking to Horacio Verbitsky, a leading Argentine investigative journalist, well known for his human rights investigations. I wanted to ask you about this issue of hiding political prisoners when a human rights delegation came to Argentina. Can you tell us when this was, what are the allegations, and what was the role, if any, of Bergoglio, now Pope Francis?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: No, in this episode, Bergoglio has no intervention. The intervention was from the cardinal that in that time was the chief of the church in Buenos Aires. That is the position that Bergoglio has in the present. But in that time, he was not archbishop of Buenos Aires. When the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights came into Argentina to investigate allegations of human rights violations, the navy took 60 prisoners out of ESMA and got them to a village that was used by the Cardinal Aramburu to his weekends. And in this weekend property were also the celebration each year of the new seminarians that ended their studies. In this villa in the outskirts of Buenos Aires were the prisoners during the visit of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. And when the commission visited ESMA, they did not find the prisoners that were supposed to be there, because they were
AMY GOODMAN: ESMA beingESMA being the naval barracks were so many thousands of Argentines were held. So where were they?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: Yes, but Bergoglio has no intervention in thisin this fact. Indeed, he helped me to investigate a case. He gave me the precise information about in which tribunal was the document demonstrating that this villa was owned by the church.
AMY GOODMAN: He said that they were hidden in a villa that was owned by the Catholic Church?
HORACIO VERBITSKY: Yes. And the prisoners were held in a weekend house that was the weekend house of the cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires in that time. And Bergoglio gave me the precise information about the tribunal in which were the documents affirming this relationship between this property and the archbishop of Buenos Aires.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to break, and then we're going to come back to Horacio Verbitsky, as well as our guest in studio named Ernesto Semán, who is a historian at New York University, former reporter for the Argentine newspaper, both the same as Horacio's newspaper, Página/12, and Clarín, where he reported on politics and human rights, as well as, well, Father Bergoglio, now Pope Francis. This is Democracy Now! We'll be back in a minute.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/14/po...journalist

[Magda Hassan]

Lest we forget the shameful history of the Vatican and numerous Catholic priests in running the ratlines which enabled Nazi war criminals to escape from Europe to countries such as..... Argentina.

The Catholic Church and right-wing miltary dictatorships have been natural bedfellows for at least a century.

In South America, this was challenged by Liberation Theology.

And so the cardinals and the bishops betrayed the priests who thought Jesus was on the side of the poor, and grassed them out to horror, torture, murder.

At the hands of fascists.

The Disappeared.

Early Spanish ratlines

snip

I do wonder about this too. His parents are Italian. As are many in Argentina. He also speaks fluent German and studied in Germany for many years at a theological college. So many Germans found their way to Argentina after the war via the Ratlines. And lived there safely with the protection of the Catholic church and sections of the deep state. In the previous articles I posted it claims Bergoglio is a member since 1972 of the Iron Guard. This is a fascist paramilitary organization with close links to the church and military.

[Magda Hassan]

Suitable lyrics for almost any pope.

Have you ever seen a picture of Pope Paul?
Have you ever asked yourself this question,
Would you trust this man with your soul now?
Would you trust this man? ask yourself now

His eyes are sunken and his cheeks are hollow
While you dig the poor of the world they follow
He hoarding up their gold in the Vatican
Would you trust this man? ask yourself now

A poke at the Pope, that's what we're havin'

Ave Maria, Ave Maria...

Do you remember when the floods hit Italy?
How the things they treasured most were destroyed
All the paintings and the worshipped images
'Cos they lost their faith in the real God

He's goin' down and he's goin' down fast
You really didn't think the ignorance could last
All the little children are learning
And the constellation is turning.

A poke at the Pope, that's what we're havin'

Mumbling by the tumbling tide
The king of America humbly cried
Save my soul, save it soon!
The king of America fell in swoon

Oh yea, my honey, Oh yea my honey...

[Jan Klimkowski]

Lest we forget the shameful history of the Vatican and numerous Catholic priests in running the ratlines which enabled Nazi war criminals to escape from Europe to countries such as..... Argentina.

The Catholic Church and right-wing miltary dictatorships have been natural bedfellows for at least a century.

In South America, this was challenged by Liberation Theology.

And so the cardinals and the bishops betrayed the priests who thought Jesus was on the side of the poor, and grassed them out to horror, torture, murder.

At the hands of fascists.

The Disappeared.

Early Spanish ratlines

snip

I do wonder about this too. His parents are Italian. As are many in Argentina. He also speaks fluent German and studied in Germany for many years at a theological college. So many Germans found their way to Argentina after the war via the Ratlines. And lived there safely with the protection of the Catholic church and sections of the deep state. In the previous articles I posted it claims Bergoglio is a member since 1972 of the Iron Guard. This is a fascist paramilitary organization with close links to the church and military.

Yup.

I've seen those claims as well.

We need to know more about Bergoglio's family, and how he progressed in the corrupt Argentine church to such key positions.

The Ratlines are important at another level too.

They reveal that the Vatican and Catholic priests were playing a long and amoral game, where the fascist attitude towards discipline, order, authority knowing best, authority being essentially unchallengable, are core values.

INFALLIBLE

INFALLIBILITY

A priest may abuse children, and the church will keep him in the flock, and protect him from mundane and mortal law, because he is a priest of God.

A soldier may massacre non-Catholics or torture left-wing activists, and the church will keep him in the flock, and protect him from mundane or mortal law, because he is a soldier of God.

[Peter Lemkin]

The Vatican felt OBLIGED to quash these ugly rumors and held a kind of press conference about 'all these allegations' as being patently untrue today. I'll try to find the transcript....

I think this is going to haunt Francis more than being in the Hitler Youth did to the last Pope [now catching up on all the TV and movies he missed as Pope]. They certainly do pick from a select 'crop', IMHO. Radical 'lefties' like Jesus they are NOT!

The stories being told about the new Pope is that as Cardinal he rode to work on the tram, lived in a simple flat and cooked his own meals. If true, I congratulate him [for those things only!] - somehow that doesn't seem like the likely actions of someone who also did some of the deeds he's accused of [with more than just rumor to back it up]. Something doesn't 'fit'.....It would be embarrassing if the Pope wound up indited at the International Court of Justice. Where is Judge Garzon when we need him...oh yeah, they got rid of him for being to close to Justice and the Law.

Haven't found the transcript yet...but here is something along those lines...

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican on Friday denied that Pope Francis acquiesced to Argentina's brutal military regime in the 1970s and '80s, saying the accusations are part of a "defamatory" campaign.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was elected pope on Wednesday, has been accused in some quarters of failing to protect two Jesuit priests who challenged the country's regime, leading to their kidnapping and torture by military officials in 1976.

Those claims were made a decade ago but have received renewed attention since Bergoglio was appointed the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, the first Latin American to occupy St. Peter's chair.

"This campaign against Bergoglio is well known," Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said in a news conference. "It was promoted by a publication which specializes in campaigns which are sometimes slanderous and defamatory. The anti-clerical nature of this campaign and other accusations against Bergoglio is well known and evident."

Lombardi said "nothing concrete or credible" had even been proven against Bergoglio. He said authorities in Argentina had questioned one person in connection to the case, but nothing came of it.

"There are, on the other hand, many declarations that show how much Bergoglio did to protect a large number of people during the military dictatorship," said Lombardi, who blamed what he called "elements of the anti-clerical left."

Those coming to the pope's support included Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to expose the crimes of the junta.

"Perhaps he didn't have the courage of other priests, but he never collaborated with the dictatorship," Perez Esquivel told Radio de la Red in Buenos Aires. "Bergoglio was no accomplice of the dictatorship. He can't be accused of that."

Journalist Horacio Verbitsky has contended that by dropping his order's protection of the two priests after they refused to stop working in slum neighborhoods, Bergoglio, also a Jesuit, triggered their kidnapping during Argentina's so-called dirty war. Verbitsky based his claims on statements made by one of the men when they were freed after five months. The man died in 2000.

The second priest, the Rev. Francisco Jalics, said in a statement on Friday that both priests had spoken to Bergoglio years after the incident and celebrated Mass together publicly and hugged.

"I am reconciled to the events and consider the matter to be closed," he said in the statement, which was reported by the Associated Press.

[Charles Drago]

If the pope is arrested, who will get the collar?

Sorry.

[Jan Klimkowski]

At best, this priest-turned-Pope is a coward, who refused to stand up to horror and terror.

At worst, he is an accomplice of horror and terror.

The Pope is the custodian of the gospel of Jesus, the successor to Saint Peter, the shepherd and rock of the "one true church".

I've spoken with victims of South America's dirty wars. Both Chile and Argentina had torture and concentration camps for political dissidents. Left-wing activists were taken for rides in military helicopters - some were made to watch as their friends and loved ones were pushed out into the night, to death.

The infant children of left-wing activists were stolen by the military and placed in rich, infertile, families.

This is all established fact.

The article below suggests that Bergoglio first denied this truth, then refused to help families who were victims of these horrors.

Whether he's a coward or complicit, he is clearly no worthy custodian of the moral philosophy of Jesus.

New pope's role during Argentina's military era disputed

Accusers draw ties between Catholic church and 70s junta, saying Jorge Bergoglio failed to shield two priests


Jonathan Watts and Uki Goni in Buenos Aires
The Guardian, Friday 15 March 2013

JorgeBergoglio
A young Jorge Mario Bergoglio pictured in Buenos Aires. Photograph: Argenpress/Rex Features

Pope Francis is known in his native Argentina as a man of austere habits, long pregnant pauses in conversation and a reticence about discussing himself. For supporters, this is proof of his humility, which was further underlined for them in his first address as pope to the masses in St Peter's Square, where he eschewed the usual jewelled crucifix in favour of a simple wooden cross.

For critics, however and there are many in his home country it may have more to do with allegations that he and the Roman Catholic church were guilty of the sin of omission and perhaps worse during the brutal military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983.

Those dark years cast the longest shadow over the elevation of Jorge Bergoglio, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, as the new Vicar of Christ, and continues to divide a nation.

While Argentina rang with celebratory church bells at the news of the first Latin American pope, some were seized by doubt and confusion. "I can't believe it, I don't know what to do, I'm in so much anguish and so enraged," wrote Graciela Yorio in an email published in the Argentine press on Thursday morning.

In 1976, her brother, Orlando Yorio, along with another Jesuit priest, Francisco Jalics, were seized by navy troops in the slums of Buenos Aires and held and tortured for five months at the ESMA camp, a navy base in the capital where 5,000 people were murdered by the military junta.

The two priests served under Bergoglio, who is accused in some quarters of abandoning them to the military after they became involved in leftist social movements.

His chief accuser is journalist Horacio Verbitsky, whose book El Silencio paints a disquieting picture of Bergoglio's relationship with the priests who sought his protection when they felt their lives were in danger from the military because of their social work in the slums.

Verbitsky believes the then chief of the Jesuits in Argentina played a double game, aiding Yorio and Jalics while expressing concern about their activities to military officers.

But Verbitsky's views are seen as overly simplistic by other observers of that era. "Verbitsky is not wrong, but he doesn't understand the complexity of Bergoglio's position back then when things were so dangerous," said Robert Cox, a British journalist and former editor of the Buenos Aires Herald, the only newspaper in Argentina that reported the murders as they happened. "He can't see how difficult it was to operate under those circumstances."

But Cox, who moved to North Carolina after death threats against his family in 1979, suggests Bergoglio could have done more. "I don't think he gave them in," he said. "But Bergoglio didn't protect them, he didn't speak out."

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the 1980 Nobel peace prize for documenting the junta's atrocities, takes a similar view. "Perhaps he didn't have the courage of other priests, but he never collaborated with the dictatorship," he told the Associated Press. "Bergoglio was no accomplice of the dictatorship. He can't be accused of that." The vast majority of Argentinians view the dictatorship era as appalling.

Others suggest that Bergoglio was actually a hero. Francesca Ambrogetti, co-author of The Jesuit a flattering biography of the new pope says Bergoglio told her he met the dictator Jose Rafael Videla and Eduardo Massera, the head of the navy which was in charge of some concentration camps, to try and intercede on behalf of the priests.

She said he took great risks to save others. "I believe he did all he could at that time," she said. "It's a complex issue that is very difficult to explain after so many years."

In a 2005 interview Bergoglio himself said he moved fast to save their lives. "That same night when I heard of the kidnappings I started to move. In one of my attempts to meet Videla I found out who the military chaplain was who gave mass to Videla and convinced that priest to call in sick and I managed to be named to replace him."

Bergoglio said that after the mass he managed to speak to Videla about the case, which would not have been an easy task at the time, given the climate of fear that reigned over these issues in Argentina then.

That era continues to polarise Argentina, where the current left-leaning government has reopened several prominent cases in the past decade. Details are murky. Few from that era can escape with entirely clear consciences. Many turned a blind eye and kept silent. Accusations of this sin of omission have been levelled at Bergoglio.

Myriam Bregman, an Argentine lawyer in the continuing trials of crimes at the ESMA death camp, says Bergoglio's appointment to the papacy left her confused. "It gave me a feeling of amazement and impotence," said Bregman, who took Bergoglio's declaration regarding Jalics and Yorio in 2010.

"Bergoglio refused to come [and] testify in court," she recalled, making use of Argentine legislation that permits ministers of the church to choose where to declare.

"He finally accepted to see us in an office alongside Buenos Aires cathedral sitting underneath a tapestry of the Virgin Mary. It was an intimidating experience, we were very uncomfortable intruding in a religious building."

Bregman says that Bergoglio did not provide any significant information on the two priests. "He seemed reticent, I left with a bitter taste," she said.

Estela de la Cuadra's mother co-founded the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo activist group during the dictatorship to search for missing family members. She was at first astonished, then appalled when a friend texted the news that Bergoglio had been chosen as the new pope.

"It is unthinkable, horrifying given what I know about his history," she said, recalling the disappearance of her sister.

The last time they saw each other was in January 1977 when they were members of leftwing groups formed among the students at La Plata University, then one of the most radical in Argentina.

Her sister, Elena, was three months pregnant and in hiding in Buenos Aires from military snatch squads that had already seized her husband. She "disappeared" a month later and was later seen by survivors in a concentration camp run by the navy.

Desperate, the family used a connection with the global head of the Jesuit order the "black pope", Pedro Arrupe to lobby for her release. He put them on to Bergoglio, who provided a letter of introduction to a bishop with connections to the military dictator.

The only answer that came back, said Estela, was that her sister's baby was now "in the hands of a good family. It was irreversible." Neither mother nor child were heard from again.

For Estela, Bergoglio did the bare minimum he had to do to keep in line with the black pope. She says the story underlines the close connections between the Catholic church and the military junta, as well as what she sees as lies and hypocrisy of a new pope who once claimed to have no knowledge of the adoptions of babies being born in concentration camps and then adopted by families close to the regime.

"I've testified in court that Bergoglio knew everything, that he wasn't despite what he says uninvolved," said Estela, who believes the church worked with the military to gather intelligence on the families of the missing.

She is also furious that Bergoglio refused to defrock another priest, Christian von Wernich, who was jailed for life in 2007 for seven killings, 42 abductions and 34 cases of torture, in which he told victims: "God wants to know where your friends are."

She is now requesting classified documents from the episcopal and Vatican archives, which would shed more light on the issues.

That is unlikely to be approved in Rome, though it would until Wednesday at least have probably gone down well in the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

The Argentine president is a staunch advocate of taking to court not only military officers responsible for the killing of thousands of young activists, but also civilians who may have played a role back then.

Fernández has an icy relationship with Bergoglio who is seen as a conservative and has studiously avoided him over the last years, moving out of the city every 25 May when Bergoglio gave his annual mass at Buenos Aires Cathedral.

As he has shown by rising through the ranks of the church Bergoglio is an extremely astute politician, who uses the sparseness of words and space to press home his considerable influence on government and legislature.

"He is a participant in Argentine politics, but in his own way very low profile. More politicians pass through his office than either the opposition or the government would care to admit," said Washington Uranga, social science professor at the University of Buenos Aires.

"People go in search of coverage, to ask him to use his influence. In other cases, he calls on them to come, but it is always in his territory. It's always in his office."

When Bergoglio does occasionally speak out in public, it tends to be with allusions rather than direct references to Argentina's darkest era. When trials reopened in 2006, he suggested it was not a good idea to churn up the problems of the past, although this was seen as a comment on the rise in the number of trials.

"We are happy to reject anger and endless conflict, because we don't believe in chaos and disorder … Wretched are those who are vindictive and spiteful," he said in a public sermon.

Additional reporting by Sebastián Lacunza

[Peter Lemkin]

The other 'interesting' 'item' is that he is a Jesuit. I know many Jesuits who are radical as anyone can imagine...but he is DEFINITELY not...I'm not familiar with the 'spread' of Jesuit thinking/philosophy/deep politics. All Jesuits I know [as an Atheist Jewish Radical] are very, VERY different than the new Pope. I used to work with Dan Sheehan and the Christic Institute..who had zero problems with me and my beliefs - nor I with theirs! This was about the Avergan-Honey lawsuit and Iran-Contra, but was also connected to JFK assassination and all the other major false-flag covert ops and Iran-Contra and the hidden 'Octopus' in the USA and the Planet. They were all Jesuits...but of a VERY 'different stripe'!