Meet The New Pope, Same As The Old Pope

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the newly self-christened “Pope Francis,” is in the tradition of most of his predecessors of the past century- a man who carried on his church's alliance with fascism. (1)

During the days of the Argentine fascist military junta (1976-83) which tortured and murdered 30,000 Argentines, then “Father” Bergoglio headed the Jesuits in that country. He never publicly opposed the junta. Two Jesuit priests were expelled by Bergoglio for ministering to the poor in the slums, according to the priests' later accounts. Within a week, they were kidnapped and tortured by the fascist military. (But they were among the lucky few who survived. They turned up months later, drugged and dumped in a field.) By expelling them from the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), Bergoglio of course gave a green light to the junta to kidnap and torture them. Years later, Bergoglio parried the priests' allegations against him by claiming to have lobbied General Videla for their release. (2)

When I searched for details of the story, what I got was a link to non-U.S. media. Here's what the Canadian Globe and Mail says: 
 
“The Spanish newspaper El Pais [themajor newspaper of Spain] quotes from a 1995 memoir by Father Jalics, who now lives in Germany [where he could be interviewed, if the crappy media was interested in getting an accurate story], in which he accuses Father Bergoglio of betraying them.

“'Many people who held far-right political beliefs frowned on our presence in the slums,' the priest writes. 'They thought we were living there in support of the guerrillas, and set out to denounce us as terrorists. We knew which way the wind was blowing, and who was responsible for these slanders. So I went to [Father Bergoglio] and explained that they were playing with our lives. He promised that the military would be told that we were not terrorists. But from subsequent statements by an officer and 30 documents that we were able to access later, we saw without doubt that [Father Bergoglio] had not kept his promise but, on the contrary, had filed a false complaint with the military.'”

The Globe continues: “Reuters reports that the other kidnapped priest, Orlando Yorio, testified in a book, The Silence, by journalist Horacio Verbitsky, that Father Bergoglio had deliberately caused the kidnapping of the priests by withdrawing the Jesuit order’s protection of the two, and thus signalling to the regime that they were enemies.

“'History condemns him,' Reuters quotes Fortunto Mallimacci, the former dean of social sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, saying about Cardinal Bergoglio. 'It shows him to be opposed to all innovation in the Church and above all, during the dictatorship, it shows he was very cozy with the military.'”

The Globe then reports Bergoglio's denials and explanations; in other words, does balanced reporting. Unlike the New York Times, which not only is totally one-sided and dishonest, but in some particulars false and grossly misleading, and unlike most of the global media, which ignores the story entirely.(3)

 [“PopeFrancis and Argentina’s military junta: Which side was he on?” the Globe and Mail, 3/14/13.]

All we are getting from most of the world's media is Vatican propaganda. The new “Pope” has already trotted out a propaganda slogan, “a poor Church for the poor.” Right. A multibillion dollar global empire with its own secret bank, troves of art, and exempt from taxes, that allies itself with the greatest enemies of the poor, namely the rich and their fascist attack dogs. This is beyond irony, beyond hypocrisy. This is rankest, coldest-hearted, calculated cynicism.

We've also been told by the admiring stenographers of the media that Bergoglio has dubbed himself “Pope Francis” after St. Francis of Assisi, as part of this “friend of the poor” branding campaign. This is all transmitted to us by the media hacks as wondrous news that's supposed to uplift all of humanity. Somehow, I'm unmoved. Guess I don't have enough “faith” (read: credulous naivete). Even sources that you'd expect better from, like the UK's Guardian and Independent, and Aljazeera, have drunk the Holy Kool-Aid and parrot the Vatican propaganda. It's pretty sickening.

What, exactly, have these “Popes” done for the poor? Well, aside from working with the enemies of the poor, namely the rich and their fascist guardians, they threaten them with Eternal Damnation in the fires of Hell if they use birth control, or terminate a pregnancy. (What is it with the RCC and sadistically burning people? Burning people alive is also how they murdered scientists, political opponents, and those unlucky enough to raise suspicions of insufficient loyalty to the RCC.)

We have also been breathlessly told by an admiring media that in his first homily, Bergoglio came out with some guff about “forgiveness,” namely the need to grant it, as ordered by Jesus and “God.”

That sounds like a sneaky way of saying “give me a pass on that Argentine death squad stuff. Jesus and God tells you to.” As with all Pope propaganda always, it's self-serving, aimed at defending and advancing the interests of the RCC and its Boss.

Genuflecting before these goons in their Byzantine era costumes affirms their sham “holiness,” which is a con job that rational people must reject.

1) We can trace the history of Roman Catholic Church support for fascism back at least as far as Franco, the traitorous general who rebelled against the Spanish government and took over Spain after a civil war (aided by Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy, which also had the backing of the Vatican). During World War II, the Vatican stood aside and watched Hitler's genocidal war and extermination of most of the Jews in Europe. (Hitler's main enemies- Soviet atheistic socialism and Jews- were, respectively, the Vatican's number one foe, and millennial bete noire, ostensibly for “murdering Jesus.”) Many “good Catholics” participated in the extermination of Europe's Jewish population. None were excommunicated or told it was sinful to do so. And the Vatican since 1917 feared and loathed Bolshevism. (Yet another basis for the de facto alliance between the RCC and Western capitalist establishments.)

After the war, the Vatican issued false documents and set up a ratline for thousands of Nazi war criminals to escape to Latin America, where they aided future fascist regimes there in exterminating many tens of thousands of “communists.” (Major examples where they played a murderous role are Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Peru.) These regimes were consistently supported by the RCC. Those in the lower ranks of the Church who took the gospel of Jesus seriously and stood with the poor were targeted by those fascist regimes with the tacit approval of the bosses of the Church, who didn't even make a fuss when the archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero, was assassinated by Roberto d'Aubuisson's goons. (d'Aubuisson was a maniacal fascist fanatic and favorite of the fascist elements in the U.S. government, including members of Congress like Jesse Helms, the racist, fascist Carolina Senator.) In fact, the fawned-over Pope John Paul II replaced Romero with a reactionary, who brought the Salvadorean franchise back to its traditional role of cozying up to the rich and their murderous fascist attack dogs. (El Salvador is a country ruled by seven rich families.) (I'm afraid there are really no synonyms for “fascist.” Gets repetitive, I know.)

2) I don't have enough information to pass judgment on this self-serving claim, but on its face it's plausible. Of course since Bergoglio's the one who effectively enabled the priests' seizure in the first place, he was certainly obligated to help them- as you would expect anyone claiming to be a humanitarian to do in any event, particularly for former colleagues. In fact, he and the rest of the Argentine power elite were morally obligated to oppose the fascist regime. But as they shared its aim of extirpating any and all progressive elements in their society, and used the existence of a few hundred leftist guerrillas as an excuse to annihilate 30,000 people, they went along with the program. Of course, the terror imposed by the junta was also a factor in quelling opposition, following the blueprint of all totalitarian regimes. (Indeed the Catholic Church itself ruled Europe for millennia partly through such terror. “Heresy” was punishable by the most gruesome torture and sadistic execution by being burned alive, etc. Their system was one of ideology imposed, and political subservience enforced, through terror. And the model of inquisitions, show trials, and purges to enforce ideological conformity and political fealty to the rulers would be copied by Bolsheviks and fascists, including in the U.S., where it is sometimes called “McCarthyism,” although in the U.S. few people were physically exterminated, unlike what happened to the native Americans. Thus the RCC was an early pioneer in developing and perfecting the socio-political blueprint of totalitarian control.)

And if Bergoglio's claim of intervening to save the priests is true, that is damning in its own way as it proves that objecting to a regime crime was far from an automatic death sentence for high-status members of Argentine society. Of course, that depends on individual circumstances. The Jewish Argentine newspaper publisher Jacobo Timerman was imprisoned and tortured, but not murdered. His class probably saved his life, while his Jewishness was probably a big part of why the anti-Semitic junta seized him. His Jewishness, not just his opposition to their extermination program, made him a object of their hatred, and was also a way of setting him apart from the rest of the Argentine business and social elite. (Timerman himself provides ample evidence of junta anti-Semtism in his memoir of his imprisonment and torture, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number.)

3) The New York Times, instead of running a story on Bergoglio's complicity with the bloodthirsty Argentine butchers and his betrayal of his own priests and of the poor, made the Vatican's denials the story. [“Vatican Rejects Claims of Pope’s Ties to Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’” 3/15/13.] Indeed their story advocates the Vatican's “position,” while pretending to merely be “reporting.” And the NYT's version of events is sharply at odds with the Globe and Mail, El Pais, and Reuters. The NYT even claims the priests deny Bergoglio was at fault!

Notice also that the Globe story came first, and the NYT in effect responded to it the next day, after having ignored the “charges” initially. But anybody following events in Argentina, where this “Pope” hails from, could not have been unaware of the brouhaha there. The Mothers of the Disappeared denounced the new “Pope,” for example. This is far from a dead issue in Argentina. And the various media hacks obviously had to look at the Argentine reaction in preparing their puff pieces on the new Pope and his background. So we can presume conscious suppression of information here, not innocent “oversight” or “incompetence,” the usual alibis that even putative “media critics” all too often feed us in these situations of information suppression. (But we did get media soundbites of dutiful Argentina Catholics verbally genuflecting at the new Pope's knees, the standard capitalist media behavior for each new Pope. In fact there's nary a critic of the “Church” in the media to be heard, not about protecting pedophile priests, not about its hidebound, repressive ideology, and certainly not about its alliances with fascism.)

Indeed, the NYT's version of reality flies in the face of the priests' own written accounts as reported by the Globe and Mail (and virtually ignored by the rest of the U.S. and UK media). Comparing the details in the Globe and Mail (and El Pais) with the radically different story offered by the NYT, it is inescapable to conclude that at a minimum the NYT is being deceptive, but more likely is flat out lying. (Shocking!)*

Given the NYT's history of support for fascist regimes in Latin America, and its systematic minimization of the crimes of those regimes, there is no reason to trust the NYT here. The NYT hid the terror and mass murder in Argentina for many years, among other crimes of complicity in Latin American fascism.

I'll have more on media mendacity around this at www.propagandaanalysis.blogspot.com shortly.

*Hey, this is a “newspaper” that once invented a story about 8 LSD users blinding themselves by staring at the sun. It also created the apparently immortal myth that Kitty Genovese was murdered in Queens, NY, while dozens of neighbors ignored her screams. [See “On The Media” for that one. There's audio and a transcript available.] There's probably about 500,000 or more other lies and fabrications the NYT has come up with over its history. Space considerations prevent me from listing them all here. To be fair, more of the NYT's trickery and deception is done by omission and slant (aka “spin”) than by making like Pinocchio. So I wouldn't say that the NYT is “full of lies,” just that it contains a lot of lies. Big difference (I guess).