Left, Jorge Bergoglio with his parents in 1958 when he joined the Society of Jesus. Right, Bergoglio saying Mass in Cordoba in 1976.
'Comrade' Bergoglio
What he and his followers won't say about his past
Translated from
Originally published in
LA VERITA
January 30, 2019
Once upon a time in Argentina, there was a Jesuit, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was among the opponents of Liberation Theology, which was not far from Castroism, and who in the 1970S was a member of the Guardia de Hierro (Iron Guard), a Peronist organization that proclaimed itself nationalist, Cahtolic and ferociously anti-Communist.
In those days, when anyone reminded him that the Argentine Iron Guard harked back to the Romanian Iron Guard, a movement led by Commandant Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, nationalist and fascist, Bergoglio would reply, “So much the better”.
For the record, the Romanian Iron Guard was a very popular movement in 1930s Romania, and was considered anti-Semitic and Nazi-loving, attracting many passionate followers not just in Romania. One of this was Italian journalist Indro Montanelli, who published in
Corriere della Sera a series of enthusiastic reports full of admiration for Codreanu, in the summer of 1940, with the Second World War well under way – belying his posthumous testimony that he converted to anti-fascism in 1938. These texts were recently republished in an anthology of Montanelli’s articles entitled
Da inviato da guerra (As a war correspondent).
Evidently, even in Peron’s Argentina, the myth of Codreanu (who was barbarously assassinated) and of his supposed Christian fundamentalism had its proselytes. In 1974, after Peron died, the Argentine Iron Guard was dissolved. At that time, they comprised 3,500 militants and 15,000 acitivists who opposed the left-wing guerrilla fighters infiltrated by the Castrist followers of Che Guevara; they were, so to speak, the far right wing of justicialism
[the term used to describe Peron’s personal ideology]. The founder of the organization to which the young Bergoglio belonged was Alejandro Gallego Alvarez, and his movement was very particular about the ‘cultural formation’ of its members and their presence among ‘the disinherited and the least’
[Peron’s ‘preferential' constituency].
In those years, Bergoglio was a declared adversary of leftists Jesuits who held nationalist and populist views. His aversion at the time to liberation theology earned him the accusation of
omerta [Mafia-like vow of silence over bad things happening in one’s own organization] and later of collaborating with the dictatorship of the military generals frm 1976-1983, from Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Argentine activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 for “his courageous nonviolent struggle (that) lit a light in the darkness of Argentina's violence” during the military dictatorship.
Historian Osvaldo Bayer told the newspapers when Bergoglio was elected pope, “It is a bitter defeat for us that Bergoglio has become pope”, and Orlando Yorio, one of the Jesuit priests captured and tortured by the generals’ secret service would say: “Bergoglio never warned us of the risk that we ran. I am sure that he himself provided the police with a list that included our names”.
It was only after the military dictatorship fell that Bergoglio started to distance himself from ‘nationalistic’ Peronism.
I have faithfully taken the above reconstruction from a book by Emidio Novi,
La riscossa populista [The populist comeback], which has just been published by Controcorrente, in which Novi claims that the reigning pope’s progressivist and worldly preferences were born out of his past, that
“Papa Bergoglio wishes to forgive himself for his fascist past that lasted until 1980”. And that is why he does not waste any opportunity to proclaim what is politically correct, the progressivist ideology of indiscriminate ‘welcome’ and of radical anti-nationalism.
Novi, who had been a journalist for years before becoming elected senator under Forza Italia (Berlusconi’s party), died in August last year in his hometown of Sant’Agata in Puglia, southeast Italy, after he was run over by a garbage truck that was backing up. His book was published posthumously with a preface by Amedeo Laboccetta and edited by his son, Vittorio Alfredo Novi.
Novi had described himself as a populist decades before the populist wave emerged in Italy. He was a populist to the third power (i.e., cubed rather than squared, as an expression of the strength of his conviction), because he came from the most militant wing of the Italian Socialist Movement that had been inspired by fascist socialism; then because he came from southern Italy and was a genuine interpreter of ancient southern populism on the cusp between populist revolt and nostalgia for the Bourbons
[this royal house, related to the Bourbons of France and Spain, Bourbons ruled in Naples from 1734 to 1806 and in Sicily from 1734 to 1816, and in a unified Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from 1816 to 1860. They also ruled in Parma from 1731 to 1735, 1748–1802 and 1847–1859]; and finally, Novi was a populist because he considered the financial oligarchs and the dictatorship of bankers and Eurocrats as the principal enemy of the people today. That is why he loved to describe himself as a national-populist and national-souverainist ahead of his time.
In his last book, Novi devotes many pages to the ‘papulism’ of Bergoglio, to his ‘improvised and crude theology’, to his surrender to Islam, to his migrationist obsession to the point of describing the Holy Family as clandestine immigrants seeking refuge. He considers the present pope “an instrument of the Anti-Christ”, who is useful to both the radical progressivists advocating indiscriminate immigration and to the worldly secular leaders of finance who have jumbled together the old idea of Third-Worldism with international socialism ,in a global plan that encourages nomads without roots, without a homeland and for whom there should be no frontiers.
But of his Argentine past, in the time of Peron, of his justicialism and the succeeding military dictatorship, Bergoglio prefers not to speak. Something most unlikely for the extrovert he has become on everything else.
That was about the Bergoglio that was. The following is about the Bergoglio that is very much now...
Letter from a priest:
'I never thought I would ever get to
to feel such perplexity about a pope'
Translated from
February 6, 2019
I received this letter from a priest.
I am a priest in the Archdiocese of Genoa and I never imagine I would ever come to harbor such great perplexity about the man who sits on Peter’s Chair.
I have always thought of the pope as an unmoveable, irreplaceable reference point of being a Christian. Those who, like me, grew up with John Paul II as pope, have seen in him and in his successor great examples of faith lived concretely and in holiness.
I did not welcome Benedict XVI’s resignation. He was a man who never used words randomly, he was wise and he helped me lift myself towards the transcendent. He is a man of God.
Yet I looked at the election of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires without prejudice – I did not know anything about him, and moreover, the pope is the pope. For months, I listened with interest to his words, seeing in him a simplicity that made me say to myself, “Considering his ability to enter into the hearts of men, his sensitivity towards those who suffer, perhaps he will succeed to be more incisive in annpuncing Christ and the truths of the faith in a way that will wake up the peoples of the West from their anesthetized conscience.”
But day after day, I began to perceive a crescendo in ambiguities that were subtle at first. I started to notice something distorted in his messages. Initially, I didn’t understand enough, but it emerged from his words, from his quips and from his interviews that he has a totally horizontal view of life, with the exclusion of the vertical plane and God’s judgment, and with a far from merciful contempt for those who have opinions different from his.
I must say that now, in the Catholic Church, I feel as if I were in a religion different from that I had been raised in.
- The obsession with social issues has become insupportable.
- It seems to have been forgotten that with the great saints of charity, attention to one’s brothers/neighbors was born out of contemplation and adoration of Christ.
- Bergoglio’s appeals sound like those of a politician.
- His church that is ‘outgoing’ and a ‘field hospital’ has become an agency for social services.
Frankly, as much as I believe in the importance of assisting the poor and the needy, a church that has become primarily an agency of social services does not attract me – it is not the community of those who would be saved by Christ.
And I am also struck dumb by the ambiguities about the family. Sometimes, the pope’s speeches sound ‘beautiful’ at first hearing, but revisiting them, I realize that he never conveys a clear vision. For instance, what has his Amoris Laetitia led to? Great confusion! In concrete terms, everyone today just does as he wishes, giving the priority to man while forgetting the divine commandments. This confusion, this lack of clarity, is most disqueting because they seem calculated, intended as such. But why?
In faith, I seek clarity and solidity. I seek salvation. But today it seems that the pope is telling us it is enough to just do a bit of good for others and everything else will follow. What has happened to the announcement of Chris tas the only Savior, to calling the faithful to eternal life and to the things beyond this earth?
I would never have thought I would reach this point about the Successor of Peter. Frankly, I do not understand him at all, and I feel misled.
- I go on because without the Lord, life would be nothing but desperation, and I seek to be faithful to that bimillennial deposit of faith which cannot be nullified.
- I nourish myself with the lives of saints. I listen to the words of Mary in her apparitions, when she recalls us to the vertical sense of life.
- And I confess with sorrow that in celebrating Mass, I find it difficult to mention the name of this pope.
- I find it difficult to watch hm on TV, and when others ask me about him, I quickly change the subject.
- I am burdened by the thought that he who should be the Church’s guide on earth has now become for me an obstacle I prefer to avoid.
Where is this Successor of Peter leading us?
Where is he leading a church that no longer speaks of mortal sin and no longer helps the faithful to avoid it?
What does it mean that he forgets to affirm Christ as the only savior and insists that all religions are equal?
Does he want to lead us to Paradise or elsewhere?
A PRIEST
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/02/2019 01:39]