Imprisoned Priest Francisco Jalics Breaks Silence over Pope Francis, Clearing Him for Involvement in ‘dirty War’

New York Daily News
March 21, 2013

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/priest-clears-pope-dirty-war-involvement-article-1.1294897


Critics say Pope Francis did not do enough to stop Argentina’s “Dirty War” against leftists when he was a Jesuit leader in the 1970s, but one of the victims of that crusade is now defending him.

A priest who was imprisoned for five months during Argentina’s “Dirty War” of the 1970s has cleared Pope Francis for an alleged connection to the arrest.

Argentine critics of Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio have waged a whisper campaign against the new Pope by attempting to link him to leftist purges conducted by the nation’s ruling junta — citing circumstantial evidence about the “disappearance” of two priests, Francisco Jalics and the late Orlando Yorio.

But Jalics, who lives in a monastery in Germany, cleared the air Wednesday.

“I myself was once inclined to believe that we were the victims of a denunciation (by Bergoglio),” Jalics said in a statement. “(But) at the end of the '90s, after numerous conversations, it became clear to me that this suspicion was unfounded.

“It is therefore wrong to assert that our capture took place at the initiative of Father Bergoglio,” he continued.

RELATED: CRITICS CLAIM FRANCIS DID NOT DO ENOUGH TO END 'DIRTY WAR'

Four decades ago, Jalics and Yorio were priests working in poor neighborhoods and allied with activists in the liberation theology movement — a Marxist-tinged Christian movement

Bergoglio claims he told the priests to abandon their slum work for their own safety, and they refused.

“I warned them to be very careful,” Bergoglio told his biographer, Sergio Rubin. “They were too exposed to the paranoia of the witch hunt.”


Francisco Jalics, seen in a recent photo, has issued a statement clearing then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of helping Argentina’s junta arrest and detain him in the 1970s.

The priests were then kidnapped and tortured at the Navy Mechanics School, which the junta used as a clandestine prison. They were eventually dropped off blindfolded in a field, two of the few detainees to have survived that prison.

Before his death, Yorio was convinced Bergoglio effectively delivered him and Jalics to the death squads by declining to publicly endorse their work in the slums. Jalics, safe in his monastery, did not comment for years.

And Bergoglio, who made cardinal in 2001, didn’t do himself any favors by twice invoking his right to refuse to testify in trials involving torture and murder inside the feared prison.

But in the 2010 biography, “The Jesuit,” Bergoglio said he held his tongue because he didn’t want to stoop to his critics’ level. He also claimed he helped protect people hiding from the dictatorship.

But Bergoglio was still quick to note the Leftist’s role in the “Dirty War.”

“Bergoglio has been very critical of human rights violations during the dictatorship, but he has always also criticized the Leftist guerrillas; he doesn’t forget that side,” Rubin said.

But Jalics said he’s satisfied.

“The fact is: Orlando Yorio and I were not denounced by Father Bergoglio,” he said in his statement.