A Big MonstEr Blog: About Francis -- Critiquing His Road Less Traveled

Original Title: Pope Francis I -- A "Son of the Church"

Why do I keep thinking about John Paul I whenever I see or hear quotes by Francis? JP1 was the vaguely remembered, very short term "Smiling Pope" during the late 1970s (Albino Luciani was his real name). The poor guy met a most unfortunate end. And calls for an autopsy on John Paul I's remains were officially refused by the Vatican.

There are some powerful Archbishops in the United States who are sometimes referred to as the "Smiling Bishops." Think about Cardinal Dolan in New York for example. Now it looks like we have a new smiling Holy Father too. But of course Francis' proclamations about hope and joy and his overall public demeanor -- he appears to be truly Ignatian and Jesuitical, friends -- are far, far more complicated than just his benevolent facial tics.

What should we make of this still-new pope and to what ends will he lead the global Church?

Significantly, Francis called himself 'a son of the Church' several months ago while traveling home, to the Vatican and Rome -- not Buenos Aires mind you, from a World Youth Day lollapalooza in Brazil. What does this admission mean? Given the charm offensive conducted by Francis the First through 2013, and his repeated calls to a spiritually renewed evangelization charged with compassion and charity toward the needy of the world, the self-identifying phrase (son of the Church) has seemed oddly jarring to some who observe, carefully, Catholic institutional dynamics and related matters.

Here are the concluding sections of a recent commentary -- compelling reading -- about Francis, the modern papacy, geopolitics, certain U.S. bishops, and numerous speculations about the first-ever pope from South America. It was published by a blogger, Betty Clermont, on the morning of December 7, 2013.

The piece is way more interesting than I make it sound! You'll see.

Just keep reading . . . Clermont's assertions and implied questions really got me thinking -- and I'm still thinking about them days later.

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From the Author: Betty Clermont

. . . Timely Opportunity

In strategizing their political and social defense against “kinder, gentler” populist-sounding Republicans, Democrats may find it useful to analyze (their) response to Pope Francis. Hope is a powerful emotion and words that appeal to our better angels are inspiring. How will we respond to the 2014 and 2016 messaging with the same subtexts?

Even though we knew that the leadership of the Catholic Church in the U.S. and internationally is an effective voice for . . . plutocracy and that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was selected by (such) leaders, why did we choose to ignore information about Bergoglio’s background and the choices he has made as pope? Why did we choose to believe slanted and carefully crafted news from the corporate media because the articles were telling us nice stuff?

Here’s what we remain so incurious about.

Cardinal Bergoglio was not popular in Argentina.

He has been criticized for his silence while he was provincial of the Argentine Jesuit province during the Dirty War and while other priests, nuns and bishops were being tortured and murdered for opposing military dictatorships not only in Argentina but in other Latin American countries as well. Not only helping the poor, but struggling with them to change the economic structures causing their poverty (i.e. Liberation Theology which Bergoglio has opposed to this day) was considered to be “leftist” activism and punished.

Much has already been written about whether Bergoglio could have done more to prevent his Jesuit subordinates, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics, who were working in the slums, from being arrested and tortured before their release. Very little has been written about Mónica María Candelaria Mignone and her friendswho also worked in shantytowns and were arrested along with the priests, tortured and murdered.

His official biography claims that Bergoglio “actually took major risks to save so-called subversives including giving his own Argentine identity papers to a wanted man so he could escape over the border to Brazil and sheltering many people inside church properties before they were safely delivered into exile,” but that this was unknown to the public.

When 18 officers of the dictatorship finally came to trial in 2010, Bergoglio was asked to testify about his own role including the kidnapping of the two priests. He took clerical privilege in order to not have to appear in court and the proceedings were held in his office. There has also been controversy about his testimony.

As Argentina pursues investigations aimed at exposing those responsible for the Dirty War, some activists are angry over the positions Bergoglio has taken in recent years. “Some say he’s beenmore concerned about preserving the Church’s imagethan providing evidence for Argentina’s many human rights trials.”

In July 2012, General Jorge Videla, dictator from 1976 to 1981 who recently died, was sentenced to 50 years imprisonment for orchestrating the theft of babies born in captivity to women subsequently murdered by their military captors. In a series of interviews conducted in 2010 but not published until after his sentencing, Videla explained in front of the video camera, "We had to remove a large set of people who could not be brought to justice nor shot…Each disappearance can be understood as masking, the concealment of a death.” Videla said this was necessary to install a market economy. Videla also confirmed what Argentina’s leading investigative journalist and human rights activist, Horacio Verbitsky, wrote in his book, El Silencio (The Silence), was absolutely accurate. The papal nuncio, Pio Laghi and the Argentine hierarchs were accomplices in the Dirty War against the leftists.

After Videla’s interview was broadcast, Church leaders had little choicebut to respond. Under Bergoglio’s leadership, the Argentine bishops’ conference issued an apology. The statement, Los Obispos de la República Argentina, 104º Asamblea Plenaria, 9 de noviembre de 2012, “acknowledged the Church’s failure to protect its flock during the 1970s.”

Argentines were angered when the bishops put the brutality of the military junta with a small and ineffective resistance on equal footing: “We know the suffering…because of state terrorism; as we know of the death and devastation caused by guerrilla violence.”

The episcopate tried to absolve the Church from any guilt: “We have the word and testimony of our elder brothers, the bishops who preceded us about whom we cannot know how much they personally knew of what was happening. They tried to do everything in their power for the good of all, according to their conscience and considered judgment….” As proof, the bishops offer statements by the bishops conference in 1972, 1977 and 1981 denouncing violence. The bishops refer to Videla’s charges that prelates were complicit as being “completely divorced from the truth of what the bishops were involved in at that time."

Some Argentines responded that not only did the bishops wait far too long to apologize for the Church’s human rights failures, but they also objected to their equating the junta’s opposition with the dictatorship and their self-righteous and inaccurate defense of the Church. “They also have yet to identify those responsible for the many human rights violations that the Church was aware of at the time.”

The following month, in December 2012, a provincial tribunal denounced not only the “complicity” of the Church with the dictatorship but regretted that there also “remains…a reluctant attitude of Church authorities and even members of the clergy to solve the crimes now being judged." In their ruling, the three judges stated: "Surely the members of God's people, and the generality of Argentina society, expect from an institution of such importance as the Catholic Church more crisp and clear repudiations and who, in one way or another, allowed and consented to the commission of serious events such as those now judged.”

Former judge Baltasar Garzon, advisor to the Human Rights Commission of the Chamber of Deputies of Argentina, said that if Pope Francis wants to cooperate with the victims of the Dirty War, he can open the Vatican archives on Argentina during that period.

In April, Estela de Carlotto, the president of a group known as the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who are searching for grandchildren who they think were born while their “disappeared” children were in military custody, delivered a letter to the pope in which she asked him to take “the necessary measures to help us in the search of almost 400 grandchildren who today still have not recovered their true identity.” Her letter has gone unanswered.

Latin Americans Warned Us

The day after the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope, Horatio Verbitsky wrote: “His biography is that of a conservative populist...adamant on doctrinal issues but with an openness to the world, especially toward the dispossessed masses….But at the same time he attempted to unify the opposition against the first government in many years which adopted a policy favorable to those groups.”

Ernesto Semán, a historian at New York University and former reporter for two Argentine newspapers, told us that the majority of Latin American nations are now governed by left-leaning parties but that the election of this “very conservative cardinal from the region might help bolster forces that are opposed to continuing this enormous change that’s occurring in Latin America.” Bergoglio was a strong opponent of the liberal progressive administrations of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner during “a decade in which Argentina lived the largest and fastest reduction of poverty and inequality.”

Theologian and defrocked priest because he supported same-sex marriage in Argentina, Nicolás Alessio said the election of Bergoglio as “is a masterstroke of Vatican diplomacy. The Catholic Church, about to sink between the financial and sexual scandals, urgently needed another ‘image’ in the face of public opinion in the world and more so in Latin America. The profile of Benedict XVI, a German, hard, rigid, an Inquisitor, failed to float the ‘barque of Peter,’” explained Alessio. “In Argentina and on the continent, the right-wing sectors, both political and religious, will be strengthened.” the theologian stated.

Andrea D’Atri, founder of Bread and Roses, an Argentine human rights group, agrees that, “In Argentina, his naming as pope has been received with the warmest enthusiasm by the rightist opposition.” Brazilian theologian, Ivone Gebara, wrote that what Bergoglio intends “for the poor” is “paternalistic handouts.”

To go out into the streets and give food to the poor and pray with prisoners is somewhat humanitarian, but it does not solve the problem of social exclusion that afflicts many of the world’s countries.

Nor does it solve the problem of governments which create poverty and injustice. In this light it becomes clear that his election was, beyond doubt, part of a geopolitical offensive involving competing interests and a balance of forces within the Catholic world.
The See of Peter and the Vatican State are positioning their pieces in the world game of chess in order to empower political projects championed by the North and its allies in the South. In a certain sense, the South is being co-opted by the North. A Church leader who comes from the South will help balance the forces in the world chess game, which have been displaced a good deal in recent years by left-leaning governments in Latin America and by the struggles of many movements -- among them Latin America's feminist movements, whose demands annoy the Vatican

.Even a Vatican reporter warned against “the pseudo-Franciscan and pauperist mythology that in these days so many are applying to the new pope [where] imagination runs to a Church that would renounce power, structures, and wealth and make itself purely spiritual.”

American Prelates Successfully Campaigned for Their Candidate

Fully aware of Bergoglio’s background, the American cardinals and their media experts focused the pre-conclave topics and discussions in exactly the manner favoring the Argentine’s election. More than any other national episcopate, they have the funding, know-how and experience to launch a subtle yet persuasive campaign.

Cardinal Dolan said it helps to have a popular pope “’because the reputation and the credibility of the Church are much higher now…. I've said before that we bishops lack a lot of credibility in many areas, and it's clear that the goodwill Francis enjoys right now makes things easier for bishops’to move the ball on many fronts.”

Pope Francis Appoints Plutocrats

As already mentioned, Cardinal Rodriquez Maradiaga is Opus Dei and three other cardinals that we know of on the pope’s “group of eight” advisers also are close to the “The Work”: Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Australian Cardinal George Pell and German Cardinal Reinhard Marx.
Francis put a Spanish Opus Dei bishop as head of a commission given special authority to collect confidential information about the Vatican Bank. Included on this commission is Mary Ann Glendon, token female on the board of a dozen or more neocon think tanks, publications and foundations. The pope named a Spanish Opus Dei monsignor as coordinator of another financial oversight commission and a Legion of Christ bishop has head of the government of the Vatican City State. The status of Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of Columbus, grows in proportion to the massive funding received from his group.

The pope has brought in outside consultants McKinsey & Co., the Promontory Group and Ernst and Young – and not Interpol forensic accountants – to help “manage” financial affairs. Most importantly, he set up Banco Santander, an international financial giant with ties to Opus Dei as a “shadow” bank while he “cleans up” the image of the rest.

Francis as a World Leader

German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a special trip to the Vatican to receive a blessing from the man Forbes named the “4th Most Powerful Person in the World” before her re-election in September. Although Pres. Assad has been committing atrocities against the Syrian people since the beginning of his papacy, Francis decided to hold a “prayer vigil for peace” in St. Peter’s Square only after Pres. Obama proposed a limited airstrike against military targets. And then Bergoglio met with Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu to position himself as an alternative world power in the Middle East.

Sex Abuse

The Vatican announced the formation of another commission, this one on clerical sex abuse, immediately after the pope refused to give a United Nations panel the information it requested on the subject. As the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests responded:

These crimes and cover ups have gone on for centuries quietly and decades publicly. Only decisive action can help, not more studies and committees and promises. No institution can police itself, especially not an ancient, secretive, rigid, all-male monarchy….Like his predecessors, the pope knows precisely what must be done to protect kids and expose the truth. Like his predecessors, he lacks the strength of character to do it. Clergy sex crimes should be dealt with by secular authorities. And more could be done if the pope punished bishops who conceal these crimes and ordered bishops to publicly disclose their child molesting clerics.

In fact, I inferred that the lack interest . . . in the mainstream media re: reporting (about this) new commission that even they had a difficult time treating Pope Francis’ latest headline as something other than another PR gesture. And unless Democrats can come up with a way to cut through and expose empty rhetoric and the best public relations we’ve even seen, we can start now wondering how this country or our world can survive another Bush-like administration.
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Footnote:

Figuring out what the U.S. bishops actually contribute to charity is an inexact process since no total figures are available. So I looked at the Boston archdiocese financial statement since Cardinal O’Malley is the only American on Pope Francis’ “G8” group of cardinal/advisers. (Keep in mind, however, that auditors can only report on the information given to them. Only forensic auditors look for what’s not been revealed by the principal.) I will give all the figures, unless otherwise noted, in millions because you will see the results are so conclusive that lack of detail isn’t going to matter.

According to the 2012 Archdiocese of Boston financial report, Catholic Charities spent $31m on program services. Close to $20m, or 62.3% (I didn’t round off in figuring percentages), came from government grants. Cardinal O’Malley contributed approx. $820,000 or 2.6 %. I did not even try to find financial reports for 195 (arch)dioceses in the U.S., but rather extrapolated based on the number of Boston Catholics as a percentage of the total. The only source I could find by diocesan population lists 2,077,487 Boston Catholics as of 2004. The total number of Catholics in the U.S. according to the Official Catholic Directory was 64.8m in 2005, so Boston has 3% of the total. Using this admittedly very rough figure, we’ll assume that if Boston spent $31m on charity, then the national total for all dioceses would be $1030m of which $605m came from the government and $2.72m from the bishops.

The U.S. bishops also have a national umbrella organization, Catholic Charities USA. In 2012, it spent $3.892m in program services of which $2.993m came from the government. So $2.72m plus $89.9M ($3.892m minus $2.993) is the total annual charitable giving of the U.S. episcopate - $92.6m.
The National Center for Charitable Statistics researchers tallied up expenditures by nonprofits in the broad category of "human services," which includes nutrition, employment assistance, legal aid, housing, disaster relief and youth development. In 2010, the most recent year available, they came up with total expenditures of $168 billion in that category. So the Catholic bishops contribute about .06% to total nonprofit expenditures in the U.S.

(Unlike the above cited source, I omitted such charities as Boys Town and Covenant House because they are not funded or controlled by the bishops nor are charities at the parish level. In other words, if the Vatican and bishops ceased to exist, all of these charities would continue as they are.)

Every time I have brought up this subject in previous diaries I have had to make assurances that yes, Catholics are generous; yes, Catholics do numerous good works. I am, however, trying to make the point that the next time a Catholic prelate threatens to close his charities if this nation doesn’t agree to limit women and gay rights, we can with confidence tell him to stick it.