When Pope Francis was archbishop of Buenos Aires over a decade ago, he claimed that the Argentine government supported spurious claims that he had collaborated with the 1970s military dictatorship and sought to “cut my head off.”
On April 29, on a visit to Hungary, Francis delivered these words to a small gathering of Jesuits. Francis’ statements were published on Tuesday in the Italian Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica, as is customary following such visits. Francis himself is a Jesuit.
During his visit, a Hungarian Jesuit questioned Pope Francis about the late Father Frenc Jalics, a Hungarian social worker who was imprisoned for allegedly assisting communist insurgents while laboring in a Buenos Aires slum.
Jalics and an Uruguayan Jesuit priest called Orlando Yorio were both imprisoned in 1976. Yorio died in the year 2000, while Jalics died in the year 2021.
When Pope Francis was elected in 2013, an Argentine journalist alleged that Francis had abandoned two priests who had spoken out against the military’s “dirty war” against leftists as Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the head of Argentine Jesuits.
Some people in the government wanted my head
“The situation was really very muddled and uncertain” (under the dictatorship). “Then there was this myth that I was responsible for turning them over to jail authorities,” Francis said.
In addition to Francis’s repeated denials, Jalics issued a statement after Francis’ election as Pope asserting that the detention was not Francis’ fault.
In 2010, while archbishop of Buenos Aires, the future Pope appeared before a three-judge tribunal investigating the dictatorship period.
“Some people in the government wanted to cut off my head,” Francis stated, but his innocence was eventually confirmed.
The Pope did not elaborate, although as archbishop of Buenos Aires from 2007 to 2015, he had a strained relationship with President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s government.
During his many visits to the Buenos Aires slums, she accused him of taking a political stance, and she once avoided him by missing a traditional Mass there.
Francis reminded the Hungarian Jesuits that he had seen one of the three judges who had questioned him in 2010, “and he told me clearly that they had received instructions from the government to convict me” after he was elected Pope.
One explanation for Francis’s lack of visits to Argentina since becoming Pope is that his connection with the country’s politicians has been strained.
