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Francis I: The First Latin American Pope UPDATED

Read my article on the new Pope at BlogHer
Francis I: The First Latin American Pope.

UPDATE:
Please read Correcting my error on my article on Pope Francis regarding liberation theology.


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  2. Not a champion of liberation theology, but a champion of those who have rejected it, as has he.

  3. I’m having to research this further, Kermit. There are a lot of conflicting reports, and I need to look further into it.

  6. What little I have read about the new Pope would suggest that he is not a proponent of Liberation Theology. More research needs to be done.
    Over the decades Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul has written a number of perceptive-and controversial- articles about Argentina in the New York Review of Books, which lend insight into the madness that enveloped Argentina in the 1970s, including Liberation Theology. In his 1972 article, The Corpse at the Iron Gate, he writes about meeting a “Liberation Theology” supporting priest and other supporters of the Montonero/Peronista guerrillas .

    The priest in charge was one of the “Priests for the Third World.” He wore a black leather jacket and his little concrete shed of a church, oversimple, rocked with some amplified Argentine song. It had been whispered to me that the priest came of a very good family; and perhaps the change of company had made him vain. He was of course a Peronist, and he said that all his Indians were Peronist. “Only an Argentine can understand Peronism. I can talk to you for five years about Peronism, but you will never understand.”
    But couldn’t we try? He said Peronism wasn’t concerned with economic growth; they rejected the consumer society. But hadn’t he just been complaining about the unemployment in the interior, the result of government folly, that was sending two Indians into his shantytown for every one that left? He said he wasn’t going to waste his time talking to a norteamericano; some people were concerned only with GNP.
    But the man with me was uneasy. He said we should at least wait and tell the father I wasn’t an American. We did so. And the father, abashed, explained that Peronism was really concerned with the development of the human spirit. Such a development had taken place in Cuba and China; in those countries they had turned their backs on the industrial society.

    The government is to be blamed for policies which do not promote economic growth. But economic growth is not as important as “development of the human spirit” as is done in totalitarian societies such as Fidel’s Cuba or Mao’s Red-Guarded China. That is a vivid example of the irrationality of a proponent of Liberation Theology. More irrationality follows.

    These lawyers had been represented to me as a group working for “civil rights.” They were young, stylishly dressed, and they were meeting that morning to draft a petition against torture. The top-floor flat was scruffy and bare; visitors were scrutinized through the peep-hole; everybody whispered; and there was a lot of cigarette smoke. Intrigue, danger. But one of the lawyers was diverted by my invitation to lunch, and at lunch—he was a hearty and expensive eater—he made it clear that the torture they were protesting against wasn’t to be confused with the torture in Perón’s time.
    He said: “When justice is the justice of the people men sometimes commit excesses. But in the final analysis the important thing is that justice should be done in the name of the people.” Who were the enemies of the people? His response was tabulated and swift. “American imperialism. And its native allies. The oligarchy, the dependent bourgeoisie, Zionism, and the ‘sepoy’ left. By sepoys we mean the Communist Party and socialism in general.” It seemed a comprehensive list. Who were the Peronists? “Peronism is a revolutionary national movement. There is a great difference between a movement and a party. We are not Stalinists, and a Peronist is anyone who calls himself a Peronist and acts like a Peronist.”
    “There are no internal enemies,” the trade union leader said, with a smile. But at the same time he thought that torture would continue in Argentina. “A world without torture is an ideal world.” And there was torture and torture.     “Depende de quién sea torturado. It depends on who is tortured. An evildoer, that’s all right. But a man who’s trying to save the country—that’s something else.”

    Years before the butchers and torturers of the 1976-83 military government took over, the opponents of the military gave sanction to torture. This shows that the military torturers and butchers were unfortunately not an aberration of Argentine society, but an expression of it.

    Had the guerrillas not continued their kidnappings, killings and bombings while Argentina was governed by democratically elected Peronist Presidents [Juan and Isabel/Evita II], the military butchers would never have staged their coup in 1976.

    [There were right wing Peronists and left wing Peronists, which explains why left wing Peronists would continue their kidnapping,killings, bank robberies, and bombings under a democratically elected Peronist government.]

    Where the new Pope stood in all that madness, I have no idea. From what little I have read, the new Pope has been an opponent of the Kirchners, Nestor and Cristina/Evita III. Bear in mind that the Kirchners- especially Nestor- had former Montoneros in upper level positions in the government.

    [In a 1992 NYR article (Argentina-Living with Cruelty, NYR, January 30,1992) which is behind a paywall, Naipaul identifies the priest as Father Mujica, who was killed in 1974.]