ARGENTINA
Vatican Insider
The journalist Horacio Verbitsky is in an awkward spot following the discovery and removal of some highly critical notes he made about the current Pope, from the digital archive of “Pagina/12”, the newspaper that originally published them
ANDRÉS BELTRAMO ÁLVAREZ
VATICAN CITY
He had been Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s biggest critic for years. Today he finds himself in the eye of the storm, so to speak. His books and articles drove home the theory about the Pope’s incriminating past, in other words his complicity in Argentina’s last military dictatorship. But the most renowned human rights activists gave him the cold shoulder. The disappearance of the most critical notes ever written about Bergoglio from the digital archive of Argentinian newspaper Página/12, has sparked a new debate regarding the credibility of Horacio Verbitsky.
The discovery came to light on the web earlier this week and quickly caught the press’s attention. At least eight articles Verbitsky wrote in 2005 and 2010 have vanished from the website of Argentina’s oldest left-wing newspaper. Some media speculated that it was done in the spirit of the new era of “reconciliation” between Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s government and the Argentinian Pope.
The journalist called this version of the facts “malicious nonsense” (in the 19/11/14 issue of Argentinian newspaper Clarín) and issued a statement in which he claimed that he himself had asked for access to the reports to be blocked because he didn’t want to give pre-chewed information to the cloud of European journalists that moved to Buenos Aires to prepare instant books on the figure.” He also stated that his investigations are still underway and that he does not like giving his work away for free.
The explanation does not say whether the request Página/12 presented to Google for the journalist’s reports to be blocked was made in the weeks following Bergoglio’s election as Pope or in recent months. But it is interesting, nevertheless, that the episode emerged just days after the President of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo), Estela de Carlotto, publicly admitted she had made a mistake about the role Bergoglio had played during the days of the dictatorship (1976-1983).
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