Pope Francis delivers his message as he celebrates the Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, Monday, Dec. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
| Photo Credit: Alessandra Tarantino
Story so far: As Pope Francis’ health continues to be in a critical condition, the Vatican on Friday (February 28, 2025), informed that he suffered an isolated coughing fit that resulted in him inhaling vomit, requiring non-invasive mechanical ventilation. The 88-year-old pope has been battling against double pneumonia and is being treated at Rome’s Gemelli hospital since February 14.
The Vatican added, “Doctors decided to keep Pope Francis’ prognosis as guarded and indicated they needed 24-48 hours to evaluate how and if the episode has impacted his overall clinical condition. However, he remained conscious and alert at all times and cooperated with the maneuvers to help him recover”.
Devotees across the world have been praying for the Pope, whose twelve-year reign as the Head of Catholic Church has gained him followers even outside his religion. By being a vocal critic on gender inequality, immigration issues, rigidity against homosexuality and even ‘throwing open the heavens to atheists’, Pope Francis quickly attracted the moniker of being one of the most ‘liberal’ pope of the Catholic Church.
People attend a rosary prayer service held for the health of Pope Francis in St Peter’s Square at The Vatican, Monday, Feb. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
| Photo Credit:
KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH
However, his initial days after his election as the bishop of Rome in 2013, he was plagued by his actions during Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’ – a seven-year crackdown by the nation’s last military government on its opponents and civilians.
Here a look at the accusations which plagued the Pope
What was the ‘Dirty War’?
As detailed in Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) declassified document, the military junta which had ousted President Isabel Peron in a coup tackled an ‘urban-based leftist insurgency’, killing between 10,000 and 30,000 people during its crackdown. After seizing power, the junta closed the national legislature, imposed censorship, banned trade unions, and brought state and municipal governments under military control.
To suppress guerilla activities, the military administration also instituted the Process of National Reorganization – setting up over 300 secret prisons for detaining anyone suspected of being a dissident. Apart from insurgents, thousands of students, educators, trade unionists, writers, journalists, artists, left-wing activists, members of the clergy, and alleged sympathizers who were apprehended overnight, interrogated and often tortured in these prisons and many killed. While the crackdown initially had the public’s support, soon evidences of human rights violations came in the open, evoking opposition among citizens.
Picture taken 30 March 1982 of a worker who is being arrested during a protest against Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983) in Buenos Aires. _Participants in Operation Condor, in which six South American dictatorships collaborated to torture and assassinate their opponents, will face judgment May 27, 2016, four decades after their actions and three years into their trial.
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AFP PHOTO / DANIEL GARCIA
Global attention to the situation grew in 1980 when Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who had lost children in the “Dirty War,” began holding weekly vigils in the Plaza de Mayo, highlighting the ‘disappearances’. Amid growing outrage among public, the military tried to seize the Falkland Islands from the British in 1982. However, as the military campaign failed, the junta was discredited leading to its ultimate fall in 1983. Once a democratically elected government took power, it constituted the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons in December 1983. Through the decades, the perpetrators were tried, convicted and sentenced.
What accusations did the Pope face?
According to a BBC report, in 2013, family members of two Jesuit priests – Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics accused the then-Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio of handing them over to the military authorities by not publicly endorsing their work in the slums of Buenos Aires. The Hungarian-born Jalics and the Uruguayan-born Yorio were arrested on suspicion of helping leftist guerillas in 1976 and tortured for five months.
Father Yorio, who passed away in 2000 was championed by his sister Garciela in 2013 as she maintained that Father Bergoglio, who was then the superior of Argentine Jesuits, had effectively lead her brother to fall in the military junta’s hands. However, Father Jalics did not put the blame on the newly-elected pope stating, that he had “reconciled with the events and, for my part, consider them finished”.
The Vatican also denied Pope Francis was guilty of any wrongdoing, pointing out that Father Bergoglio, who had become archbishop of Buenos Aires by 2010, had testified before a three-judge panel investigating the period of dictatorship and no evidence were found to substantiate the accusations.
However, his tenure as archbishop of Buenos Aires was turbulent as he had a rocky relationship with President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner who served two terms from 2007 to 2015. She had often accused him of taking sides politically during his visits to slums in Buenos Aires and once avoided him by shunning a traditional Mass in the capital, reports Reuters.
On April 29, 2023, the pope publically defended himself in a private conversation with Jesuits in Hungary.
“The situation (during the dictatorship) was really very confused and uncertain. Then the legend developed that I had handed them over to be imprisoned,” said Pope Francis, adding, “Some people in the government wanted to ‘cut off my head’ … (but) in the end my innocence was established”. He also maintained that one of three judges who had interrogated him in 2010 told him that ‘they had received instructions from the government (headed by Ms. de Kirchner) to convict him’.
Published – March 01, 2025 07:29 pm IST
