Special Report: the Damning Documents That Show New Pope Did Betray Tortured Priests to the Junta
Sharon Churcher and Tom Worden
Damning evidence that Pope Francis may have betrayed two priests who were kidnapped and tortured by Argentina’s brutal military junta can be revealed today. The Mail on Sunday has seen documents which appear to show the new Pope secretly collaborated with the country’s dictatorship when he was head of the Jesuits there – using his real name Jorge Bergoglio – during the Dirty War that started in the Seventies. One of the documents is a 27-page report by Orlando Yorio, one of the kidnapped priests, in which he accuses the current pontiff of secretly spreading dangerous rumours about him and a colleague while personally promising them support and protection. A second document is a confidential government memo written in 1979 which appears to reveal Bergoglio informed junta officials that Father Yorio and Father Francisco Jalics were suspected of collaborating with guerrillas and that Jalics was accused of encouraging dissent among a congregation of nuns. Bergoglio, 76, who was chosen as the new Pope on Wednesday, has been accused of effectively handing the priests over to the regime’s death squads by failing to quash rumours they were dissidents. Pope Francis strongly denies claims he was in league with the generals who kidnapped and murdered thousands of Argentines, including pregnant women, during their seven-year rule. But the documents unearthed in Buenos Aires suggest he was complicit with the regime both before and after the two priests were seized in 1976. Yorio wrote his 27-page formal report to the Jesuit hierarchy in Rome in November 1977, a year after he was released from a military prison, addressing it to Father Moura, the chaplain to the Society of Jesus in Rome. It gives a chilling first-hand account of how the priests were seized by 200 armed troops, drugged, tortured and held for five months then dumped half-naked in a field. And it describes how Yorio and Jalics became convinced Bergoglio had betrayed them, ignoring their desperate pleas to protect them from the military. The two men were suspected of collaborating with guerrillas because of their work among the poor in Buenos Aires slums. Shortly before they were seized they were dismissed from the Jesuit order by Bergoglio. Yorio wrote in his report: ‘Rumours emerged about our participation with the guerrillas. As things were in Argentina, a claim like that coming from important mouths (as the Jesuits are) could, plain and simply, signify our death. ‘The forces of the extreme Right had already machine-gunned a priest in his house and had kidnapped, tortured and left for dead another. Both of them were living in poor towns. We had received various warnings along the lines that we should take care. Father Jalics had personally spoken with several Jesuits to warn them of the situation and make them take note of the danger. He had also spoken about this with Father Bergoglio, making him see above all that my life had been put in serious danger. ‘That month of December [1975], given the continuing rumours about my participation with the guerrillas, Father Jalics spoke seriously again with Father Bergoglio. [He] recognised the seriousness of the situation and promised to put a stop to the rumours and to hurry up and speak to people from the armed forces to testify our innocence.’ Yorio claims Bergoglio not only failed to quash the rumours, he actively spread them among Jesuits. He wrote: ‘We began to suspect his honesty.’ According to Yorio’s account, Bergoglio wrote a letter to Argentinian Archbishop Miguel Raspanti outlining serious accusations against the two priests. It is not clear if Bergoglio was making the allegations himself, or passing on accusations made by others. Yorio wrote: ‘I went to speak to Father Bergoglio and he totally denied it. He said his report had been completely favourable and that Archbishop Raspanti was elderly and sometimes got confused.’ Yorio then described the horror of being kidnapped on May 23, 1976, tortured and interrogated at a prison in the Navy School of Mechanics in the Argentine capital, where 5,000 people were murdered during the dictatorship. He wrote: ‘For five months Father Jalics and I were chained by the feet and hands and had our eyes covered. Totally incommunicado. ‘The first four or five days I went without eating, without drinking water, without going to the bathroom. A month and a half later I was able to change my dirty clothes. ‘On the sixth day they put me together with Father Jalics. They started giving me food and I was able to go to the bathroom.’ Yorio said he was drugged and interrogated. He was accused of being a guerrilla and of ‘having sexual relations with a female catechist’. A public outcry over their arrests meant they were eventually freed, dumped semi-naked from a helicopter in a field outside Buenos Aires on October 23. The damning report was handed to The Mail on Sunday by leading Argentine author and human rights activist Horacio Verbitsky, who began investigating Bergoglio shortly after he was named Archbishop of Buenos Aires in February 1998. It was given to him by Yorio’s family after the priest died from natural causes in 2000. Yorio’s claims are vigorously denied by the Pope. Last week, Vatican spokesman the Reverend Federico Lombardi said: ‘There has never been a credible, concrete accusation against him. ‘There have been many declarations of how much he did for many people to protect them from the military dictatorship.’ Mr Verbitsky has also given The Mail on Sunday a copy of a foreign ministry memo from 1979 which suggests Bergoglio continued to collaborate with the regime even after the two priests were freed. The typed note, over four paragraphs, appears to outline Bergoglio’s criticisms of Jalics to a government official, and gave reasons why the priest, who was by then living in exile in a German monastery, should be refused a new passport. Bergoglio told the official that Jalics was suspected of working with guerrillas and of encouraging dissent among a group of nuns. The official wrote: ‘These facts were supplied . . . by Father BERGOGLIO himself, signature to the note with a special recommendation not to grant his request [for a new passport].’ A stamped foreign ministry paper dated December 20, 1979, reveals the passport application was then refused because of Jalics’ ‘previous record’. The new Pope was last week also accused of links to officials who seized as many as 500 newborn babies from their mothers – to be adopted by supporters of the junta. Estela de la Cuadra, a woman whose pregnant sister went missing during the dictatorship, produced evidence last week that the Church suggested Bergoglio could help her quest for the truth. He is alleged to have assigned a priest to investigate the case. Ms de la Cuadra claims the priest later told her that her sister had given birth to a daughter and that it would be ‘impossible’ to return the child to the family as she had been given to ‘too important a family’. Pope Francis claims he had no knowledge of babies being stolen until after the end of the dictatorship. He also has insisted that he instructed Jalics and Yorio to give up their work in the slums for their own safety, and that he worked behind the scenes for their release. ‘I did what I could with the age and little influence I had,’ he said. Pope Francis claims he held secret meetings with military chief General Jorge Videla to appeal for their release. His version of events was backed yesterday by a judge who investigated the atrocities committed at the military prison where the priests were held. In 2010 Bergoglio testified for four hours as a witness in the investigation. Yesterday judge German Castelli told Argentine newspaper La Nacion: ‘It is totally false to say Jorge Bergoglio handed over the priests. We analysed it, we listened to that version, we saw the evidence and we understood that his actions had no legal implications in these cases.’ On Friday Jalics, who still lives in Germany, said he was ‘unable to comment on the role of Father Bergoglio in this matter’. He added that he had since met and discussed the events with Bergoglio. ‘We celebrated Mass publicly together and hugged solemnly. I am reconciled and on my part, consider the matter to be closed. ‘I wish Pope Francis God’s rich blessings for his office.’
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