Bishop Enrique Angelelli of the north-western La Rioja diocese in Argentina was murdered in 1976 when the vehicle he was driving was forced from the road.

This was at the beginning of the country's 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

The military regime claimed that Bishop Angelelli, then 53, was killed in a car accident.

At the time, Bishop Angelelli was active in labour unions and was an outspoken campaigner for workers' rights.

In 2006, then-Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio called Bishop Angelelli a "martyr".

Before his death, Bishop Angelelli had sent letters to the Holy See saying that torture was a common practice in his province and that he was facing death threats.

Current La Rioja bishop Marcelo Colombo requested those letters from Pope Francis and they played a key role in the trial.

The killing of the bishop happened shortly after two priests were abducted from a church in El Chamical, taken to an Air Force base and tortured.

Their blindfolded bodies were found in waste land.

On the day he was killed, Bishop Angelelli was carrying a document to file a report on the murder of the two priests.

The La Rioja court stated that what happened to Bishop Angelelli in 1976 was part of the machinery of state terrorism and that the bishop's murder was a crime against humanity.

Ex-general Luciano Menendez, 87, was found guilty of ordering the murder of Bishop Angelelli.

Retired commodore Luis Estrella was also found guilty.

Both were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Their indictment happened after a now-former priest travelling in the vehicle with Bishop Angelelli confirmed they had been forced from the road.

It is the first time that a junta-era official has been found guilty in the killing of a high-ranking church cleric.

Menendez had earlier been found guilty in seven cases of human rights abuses and was already serving a life sentence.

Further investigations into how Bishop Angelelli's killing was covered up have been ordered.

Scores of Catholic priests and nuns "disappeared" and were tortured and killed during the dictatorship years.

Thousands of other Argentines suffered the same fate.

Sources

• RTE
• Buenos Aires Herald
• The Independent
• Image: Telam

This is the assessment of Italian journalist Nello Scavo, who has just released a book recounting Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio's efforts in helping Argentines escape persecution by the military dictatorship.

"The picture that emerges of Bergoglio is that of a capable man, who acted with the prudence and shrewdness of a 007," Scavo told Vatican Radio.

During much of the 1970s, Argentina was ruled by a right-wing military government, which "disappeared" thousands of left-wing activists and militants, accusing them of communism.

Numerous priests and religious were killed for their work in the poor neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires, which was considered a communist act.

During this time, Father Bergoglio — now Pope Francis — used his position to create an underground network of assistance and escape for those targeted by the dictatorship.

Scavo, a journalist with the Italian bishops' newspaper Avvenire, said it's not possible to give precise estimates of how many lives Bergoglio saved, mainly because he never wanted to talk about his efforts. He also did not collaborate on the book.

But the author cautiously estimates that "more than 100 people were certainly saved" by the Jesuit priest and many others — perhaps more than 1200 — were "indirectly saved" by his actions.

Ironically, at the time the future pope was accused of complicity with the regime, critics saying he was too silent about the human rights abuses taking place.

Scavo has titled his book Bergoglio's List, referring to the famous list maintained by Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who saved some 1200 Jews from being murdered during the Holocaust.

Schindler, incidentally, lived for nearly 10 years in Argentina following World War II, while Pope Francis was a teenager and young adult.

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

Mercatornet

Image: BBC

Adolfo Perez Esquivel said Pope Francis preferred to carry out a "silent diplomacy" in helping victims, rather than leading a more public outcry during Argentina's "dirty war".

"The Pope had nothing to do with the dictatorship ... he was not an accomplice," said the Nobel Peace Prize laureate said.

Perez, 81, spoke to journalists after a private meeting with Pope Francis on March 21. He said he and the Pope spoke about the so-called "dirty war" period "in general terms" during their 30-minute encounter.

During the "dirty war", as many as 30,000 Argentines were kidnapped, tortured, murdered or disappeared, never to be seen again.

Perez won the Peace Prize for his work on human rights during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

He said leaders and members of the Catholic Church reacted and behaved differently during the period as regards to either collaborating or resisting the regime.

"There were bishops who were accomplices with the dictatorship, but not Bergoglio," he said.

Meanwhile, one of the two Jesuits who were kidnapped and held for five months by Argentina's military regime has issued a new statement making it clear that he does not believe the future Pope Francis was responsible for his incarceration.

"The fact is: Orlando Yorio and I were not denounced by Father Bergoglio," said Father Francisco Jalics, who now lives in a Grmany monastery.

At the time of the kidnapping, then-Father Bergoglio was the Jesuit provincial in Argentina.

Father Jalics admits that after their release, he and Father Yorio suspected that they had been denounced. But as he learned more about Father Bergoglio's efforts to secure their freedom, he said, "it became clear to me that this suspicion was unfounded".

Sources:

Catholic News Service

The Guardian

Image: Yahoo! News

Aljazera reports claims suggesting that Bergoglio was friendly with the military dictatorship seem less credible because Bergoglio was a young priest at the time of the Dirty War.

Media have released a photo, supposedly of Bergoglio giving Holy Communion to General Jorge Rafael Videla, but Aljazeera points out, they omit to mention the man giving the general Communion cannot be identified and is clearly too old to be Bergoglio.

While Aljazeera has other pictures suggesting the church hierarchy was likely complicit with the military dictatorship, at the time of the Dirty War, Bergoglio was in his 40's, leader of the Jesuits in Argentina, and not a bishop.

Buenos Aires reporter Lucia Newman said opinion in Argentina is unclear whether Bergoglio did or did not do sufficient to reduce human rights abuses, but all acknowledge he was not a bishop at the time.

Newman says the current priority in Argentina is not the past, but on social justice, and fixing the current problems the Catholic Church is facing.

She says Bergoglio gets high marks as a bishop in Argentina.

Newman says before leaving for the Conclave Bergoglio gave an interview to a leading Argentinian journalist, Joaquin Morales Solia.

Bergoglio told the reporter he did not have a chance in being elected pope, that he was too old.

With this background, Bergoglio told the journalist what he would have done had he become elected.

One of the things he spoke about was the need to eradicate the corruption from the gilded palaces of the Vatican.

"Everyone knows who the corrupt cardinals are," he was quoted as saying.

He also said that the Vatican Bank needed to be cleaned up and made immediately transparent.

Sources

• Aljazera
• Image: Global Post

Questions linger about Bergoglio's actions during the nation's dark days: the so-called Dirty War, when Argentina was ruled by dictators.

Possibly the darkest period during Bergoglio's rise to power took place when he served as the nation's top Jesuit.

In 1976, during Argentina's dictatorship, the navy kidnapped priests Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics. Some have accused Bergoglio, then provincial superior for the Society of Jesus, of not doing enough to assert his influence and free them. They were found five months later.

The incident led to rumors and allegations that Bergoglio was complicit in the dictatorship's appalling atrocity — that he didn't do enough to expose it and perhaps was even partly responsible for the priests' prolonged detention, said Jim Nicholson, a former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See.

Although the allegations against Bergoglio have never been proved, they continue to haunt him, so much so that the human rights group Center for Legal and Social Studies in Argentina opposes Bergoglio's selection as pope.

Situations relating to the priests' kidnappings "have not been clarified," said the group's director, Gaston Chillier.

Many of the allegations against Bergoglio were researched by Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky, (an investigative journalist with a past history as a leftist guerrilla,) who wrote a book about the church's role during the dictatorship.

In a 2010 column, Verbitsky alleged that Bergoglio had lied under oath during an investigation into the theft of babies from prisoners during the dictatorship.

Bergoglio testified that he never knew about the baby-stealing until after the dictatorship had fallen, Verbitsky wrote, but a victim Verbitsky interviewed claims that Bergoglio knew about it at the time. She said she had written to Francis about it.

Nicholson said there is no evidence to support the allegations. Continue reading

Image: The Telegraph

Margaret Hebblethwaite has been watching Cardinal Bergoglio for the last 10 years, she has heard two differing and conflicting opinions expressed about him. Humble and authoritarian. One is progressive and open, the other is very conservative.

While not someone who talks to the media, Bergoglio spoke twice with Hebblethwaite.

Hebblethwaite says it is clear the two Jesuits felt betrayed by Bergoglio because instead of endorsing their work and protecting them, he demanded they leave the barrio. And when they refused, they had to leave the Jesuit order.

When they later "disappeared" and tortured, it seemed to many that Bergoglio had been siding with the repression, Hebblethwaite wrote in the Guardian.

"It was the kind of complex situation that is capable of multiple interpretations, but it is far more likely Bergoglio was trying to save their lives," wrote Hebblethwaite.

Nobel Prize peace winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel said that Bergoglio had no links with the dictatorship. "There were bishops who were accomplices of the dictatorship, but it was not the case of Bergoglio."

"Bergoglio was questioned because it is said he did not do enough to get out of jail two priests, as he was the Superior of the Jesuits. But I know personally that many bishops called on the military junta for the release of prisoners and priests and these requests were not granted", said Perez Esquivel.

Fr Orland Yorio has since died, however Franz Jalics SJ, also known in Argentina as Francisco Jalics, now lives and works in Germany.

The Jesuits in Germany posted a statement from Father Jalics about the events surrounding his kidnapping online on Friday.

Starting in 1957 I lived in Buenos Aires. In the year 1974, moved by an inner wish to live the gospel and to draw attention to the terrible poverty, and with the permission of Archbishop Aramburu and the then-Provincial Fr. Jorge Mario Bergoglio I moved together with a confrere into a "Favela," one of the city's slums. From there we continued our teaching at the university.

In the civil-war-like situation back then, the military junta killed roughly 30,000 people within one to two years, leftist guerrillas as well as innocent civilians. The two of us in the slum had contact neither with the junta nor with the guerrillas. Partly due to the lack of information and through targeted misinformation our situation was also misunderstood within the church. At this time we lost our connection to one of our lay coworkers who had joined the guerrillas. After he was taken prisoner nine months later by the soldiers of the junta and questioned, they learned that he had been connected with us. Under the assumption that we also had something to do with the guerrillas we were arrested. After five days of interrogation the officer who led the questioning dismissed us with the words, "Fathers, you were not guilty. I will ensure that you can return to the poor district." In spite of this pledge, we were then inexplicably held in custody, blindfolded and bound, for five months. I cannot comment on the role of Fr. Bergoglio in these events.

After we were freed I left Argentina. Only years later did we have the chance to discuss what had happened with Fr. Bergoglio, who in the meantime had been named archbishop of Buenos Aires. Afterwards we together celebrated a public mass and solemnly embraced. I am reconciled to the events and view them from my side as concluded.

I wish Pope Francis God's rich blessing for his office.

Sources

• Jesuits Germany
• The Guardian
• Buenos Aires Herald