VATICAN CITY
Bloomberg Businessweek
By Joshua Goodman and Juan Pablo Spinetto on March 13, 2013
As Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio prepares to take over a Catholic Church rocked by sex-abuse scandals and allegations of corruption, the sharp knives of Argentina’s politics will have prepared him well.
The first non-European pope in more than 1,200 years frequently clashed with President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as archbishop of Buenos Aires, criticizing her government’s record in tackling poverty and leading protests against her proposal to legalize same-sex marriages.
The 76-year-old Jesuit priest also had to defend himself from charges that he was complicit with the nation’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship, whose leaders were put on trial by Fernandez and her late husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner.
“You have to choose a pope that accepts challenges, and he managed to resist gratuitous attacks for 10 years,” Sergio Bergman, a Buenos Aires rabbi who has worked with the new pope for two decades, said in a phone interview. “I think it factored into his selection.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.