Vatican: Pope Francis Blameless on Alleged Military Era Crimes

Pope Francis 1

• Mark leads FG’s delegation to installation

Muhammad Bello  and Yemi Adebowale with agency report                                           

The Vatican  Friday denied that the newly-elected Pope Francis failed to speak out against human rights abuses during military rule in his native Argentina.

It also emerged yesterday that the President of the Senate David Mark will lead a high-powered federal government delegation to the Vatican next Tuesday to represent the government at the formal installation of Pope Francis.

"There has never been a credible, concrete accusation against Pope Francis," said Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, adding that he had never been charged.
The spokesman blamed the accusations on "anti-clerical left-wing elements used to attack the Church."

Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, led Argentina's Jesuits under the junta in Argentina.
Like other Latin American churchmen of the time, he had to contend, on the one hand, with a repressive right-wing regime and, on the other, a wing of his Church leaning towards political activism on the left.

One allegation concerns the abduction in 1976 of two Jesuits by Argentina's military government, suspicious of their work among slum-dwellers.
As the priests' provincial superior at the time, Jorge Bergoglio was accused by some of having failed to shield them from arrest - a charge his office flatly denied.

Judges investigating the arrest and torture of the two men - who were freed after five months - questioned Cardinal Bergoglio as a witness in 2010.

The new Pope's official biographer, Sergio Rubin, argues that the Jesuit leader "took extraordinary, behind-the-scenes action to save them."

Another accusation against the new Pope from the Argentine Dirty War era was that he failed to follow up a request to help find the baby of a woman kidnapped when five months' pregnant and killed in 1977. It is believed the baby was illegally adopted.

The cardinal testified in 2010 that he had not known about baby thefts until well after the junta fell - a claim relatives dispute.

In his book The Silence, Argentine investigative journalist Horacio Verbitsky alleged the Jesuit leader withdrew his order's protection from Francisco Jalics and Orlando Yorio after the two priests refused to stop visiting slums.

The journalist is close to Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who often clashed with Cardinal Bergoglio on social policy.
Yorio, who reportedly accused Fr. Bergoglio (as he was known then) of effectively delivering them to the death squads by declining to publicly endorse their work, is now dead.

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for defending human rights during the dictatorship in Argentina, believes Fr Bergoglio "tried to... help where he could" under the junta.

"It's true that he didn't do what very few bishops did in terms of defending the human rights cause, but it's not right to accuse him of being an accomplice," he told Reuters.
"Bergoglio never turned anyone in, neither was he an accomplice of the dictatorship," Mr Esquivel said.

Members of the Presidential delegation to the Vatican are the Minister of Aviation, Princess Stella Oduah; the Minister of State (Foreign Affairs), Prof. Viola Onwuliri and the President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama.
Others on the delegation are the Chaplain of the Presidential Villa Chapel, Venerable Obioma Onwuzurumba and the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Christian Pilgrims Commission, Mr. John Kennedy Opara