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In 1976 when Fr. Jorge Bergoglio was just 39 years old and serving as provincial superior of the Jesuits of Argentina, the military overthrew the government in a coup. The dictatorship went to work against subversives and communist adversaries through abductions, tortures, and even murders, resulting in the disappearance of about 30,000 people. Much has been made about the mysteries of Bergoglio's actions during this time of upheaval. Did he fail to act against human rights violations out of fear or weakness? Was he guilty of delivering opponents into the hands of the regime? Or, did his courage and compassion prompt him to save lives? These are the questions that Italian legal journalist, Nello Scavo, set out to Argentina to answer. He had no idea of the remarkable truth his investigation would reveal. Scavo uncovers how Bergoglio built an elaborate network consisting of clandestine passageways, secret hideouts, and covert automobile rides, all in attempt to save what has been estimated at more than 100 people from torture, imprisonment, and even death. Bergoglio's List is a collection of personal stories from those who knew the now-Pope during the days of the dictatorship, including: *three students hidden for weeks by Fr. Bergoglio *how he saved a prominent, dissident politician under the cover of darkness *his bold march into an Argentine prison *and much more For the first time in English, experience not only the untold story of Bergoglio's courage and heroism, but gain an insider's view of the place where he was born and grew into a man -- the man we now know as Pope Francis.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Catholic Church

Religious intolerance

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Publié par	St. Benedict Press LLC
Date de parution	01 septembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781618906274
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0374€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Originally published in Italian as La Lista di Bergoglio by Nello Scavo.
Copyright © 2013 Editrice Missionaria Italiana Via di Corticella 179/4, 01428 Bolgona, Italy
English translation by Bret Thoman copyright © 2014 Saint Benedict Press.
All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts used in articles and critical review, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever, printed or electronic, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by Caroline Kiser
Typeset by Lapiz
ISBN: 978-1-61890-627-4
Published in the United States by
Saint Benedict Press
PO Box 410487
Charlotte, NC 28241
www.SaintBenedictPress.com
Printed and bound in the United States of America
To Stella and Pietro
Love truth, show yourself as you are,
without pretense and without fear and without concern.
And if the truth costs you persecution, accept it;
and if torment, bear it. And if for the truth
you had to sacrifice yourself and your life,
be strong in your sacrifice.
(Giuseppe Moscati)
To Fathers Filippo and Silvio Alaimo,
My Jesuits
CONTENTS
Preface
PART ONE THE REASON FOR INQUIRY
CHAPTER 1
Dozens of people on that “list”
CHAPTER 2
Argentina under the heel of the military
CHAPTER 3
Bergoglio helped the victims
PART TWO THE STORIES
CHAPTER 4
Gonzalo Mosca
CHAPTER 5
Alicia Oliveira
CHAPTER 6
Alfredo Somoza
CHAPTER 7
The Jalics-Yorio case
CHAPTER 8
Challenging the Admiral
CHAPTER 9
Father José-Luis Caravias
CHAPTER 10
Martínez Ossola–La Civita–González
CHAPTER 11
Sergio and Ana Gobulin
CHAPTER 12
José Manuel de la Sota
CHAPTER 13
Juan Carlos Scannone
PART THREE ANSWERS FOUND
CHAPTER 14
Amnesty International
CHAPTER 15
Conclusion
Appendix
Timeline
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Picture Section
PREFACE
A T this writing, summer of 2014, two generations have grown up without having lived through Argentina’s “Dirty War,” which pitted a far-right-wing military dictatorship or “junta” against anyone considered subversive. The “subversives” targeted by the junta ranged from genuine Marxist guerillas, to members of trade unions, to Catholic “church ladies” who dared petition the government to reveal the fates of family members who had been arrested and then just disappeared.
To this day there is no accurate count of how many people fell victim to the regime. A rough calculation is 19,000 shot down in the streets, 30,000 “disappeared” and presumed dead (among them approximately 500 children), untold thousands imprisoned, and perhaps as many as two million Argentinians who went into exile.
At the same time, there is no accurate count of how many escaped thanks to the courage of men and women who risked their own lives to save others, sometimes complete strangers. Their heroism recalls the men and women in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II who saved the lives of countless Jews, Slavs, Russians, Gypsies, and other targets of the Third Reich.
The title of this book is inspired by one of the most celebrated saviors of World War II, Oskar Schindler, the subject of Thomas Keneally’s book and Steven Spielberg’s film of the same name, Schindler’s List .
When the war began, Schindler was no saint. He was a chronic womanizer who cheated on his wife and a war profiteer who cultivated friendships with Nazi generals and concentration camp commandants. Yet at some point, through the mysterious workings of Almighty God, his long-dormant Catholic conscience woke up. He then made it his personal responsibility to save the lives of approximately 1000 Jewish men, women, and children.
Bergoglio’s List is the story of how then Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio—now Pope Francis—risked his life to save approximately 100 people who had been identified as “enemies” of the Argentinian junta. It appears there were dozens more whom he was able to warn before the authorities could come to arrest them.
It takes incredible courage to stand up to evil on a grand scale, and that is what the military junta was. In 1976 the armed forces launched a coup d’etat that toppled the government of President Perón. The junta drove out of office governors and judges across Argentina; dissolved congress and the supreme court; abolished the constitution; banned labor unions; censored newspapers and other media outlets; and outlawed all forms of political dissent.
The viciousness of the junta’s campaign against its opponents is difficult to comprehend. The junta created a climate of terror in which people were picked up on the streets and dragged away to detention centers. There they were brutally tortured to extract confessions and forced to incriminate others. Then so often these prisoners simply “disappeared.” Many were shot and dumped into unmarked graves. Others were thrown from helicopters while still alive into the open ocean, their bodies never to be found again.
Father Bergoglio, at the time superior of the Jesuits in Argentina, detested the viciousness of the regime. He began helping anyone who appealed to him for protection. One of the people on “the List” is Gonzalo Mosca, a left-wing labor organizer who was staunchly anti-clerical. He had hoped he could lose himself in the vast suburbs of Buenos Aires, but the military hunted him down. When the caretaker of his apartment building warned him that the military was closing in and ready to kill him, Mosca turned to the only person he felt he could trust, his brother, who was a Jesuit priest.
Father Mosca said he thought he had a solution. He called his philosophy professor from his days in the seminary, Father Bergoglio. At a predetermined location, Bergoglio picked up Mosca and drove him to the Jesuit College of San Miguel. There he was hidden for four days while Bergoglio organized an escape route that called for a brief air flight, a boat trip into Brazil, a stay with the Brazilian Jesuits, and finally a flight to Europe and safety. Recalling what Bergoglio did for him, Mosca has said, “I don’t know of other people who would have done the same thing. I don’t know if anyone else would have saved me without knowing me at all.”
Alicia Oliveira was Argentina’s first female criminal court judge. The junta forced her from office, and then began to hound her. This mother of three young children suddenly found herself on the run, unable to visit her family, unable to console her terrified children. Father Bergoglio arranged meetings between Oliveira and her children in a disused corridor of the College of San Miguel. As the situation became increasingly dangerous for her, Bergoglio found a unique way out of the country for Oliveira and several other victims—in the cargo hold of a commercial vessel carrying fruit to Uruguay.
After the junta had collapsed, former members of the regime and some of their sympathizers tried to destroy Father Bergoglio’s reputation by suggesting he had been a double agent, occasionally smuggling out of the country people wanted by the regime, but more often cooperating with the regime in its round up of priests, intellectuals, and others who opposed the junta. St. John Paul II experienced a similar detraction campaign in his native Poland under the Communists. Publically tarring the reputation of political opponents is a common practice of corrupt regimes, including the former Soviet Empire.
Prominent Argentinians, themselves victims of the regime, have come forward to defend Bergoglio. Adolfo Maria Pérez Esquivel, a civil rights activist who had been active in opposing the junta and later won the Nobel Peace Prize, has stated categorically, “There were clergymen who were accomplices of the dictatorship [but] Bergoglio was not one of them.” Graciela Fernandez Meijide, who served on the National Commission to investigate the fate of the disappeared, concurs with Pérez Esquivel, “There is no evidence that Bergoglio collaborated with the dictatorship. I know this personally.” Once something wicked, however untrue, has been published about a prominent figure, it is difficult to convince the public that the charge is a lie. Yet the testimony of such renowned targets of the dictatorship as Pérez Esquivel and Fernandez Meijide goes a long way to dispel the “black legend” of Bergoglio the clandestine collaborator.
In this volume, author Nello Scavo has collected wonderful, inspiring stories of Father Bergoglio’s courage, the gratitude of the people he helped, and their astonishment, even all these years later, that he ran such dangerous risks for their sakes. I don’t want to steal any more of Scavo’s thunder, so I’ll stop summarizing these stories here so that you, the reader, can enjoy them as I have.
Since his election to the papacy on March 13, 2013, Jorge Maria Bergoglio—Pope Francis—has been celebrated in the media for the simplicity of his way of life, for his down-to-earth manner with all types of people, for his eagerness to see what is best even in Catholics who perhaps are not living the faith as fully as one would hope, and for his off-the-cuff style of speaking (which, to be honest, has sometimes led to some confusion among the Catholic faithful). This media coverage could give the impression that Francis is a “soft” pope, what used to be called touchy-feely. But that is one reason why the eyewitness accounts in this book are so important: they reveal to us another side of Pope Francis—as a man of tremendous courage and moral certainty, who was willing to lay down his life to save victims of a savage regime.
Thomas J. Craughwell
August 15, 2014
The Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady
Thomas J. Craughwell is the author of more than two dozen books, including Pope Francis: The Pope from the End of the Earth from Saint Benedict Press.
PART ONE
THE REASON FOR INQUIRY
C HAPTER 1
DOZENS OF PEOPLE ON THAT “LIST”
H E appeared unexpectedly on their television screen in a live broadcast transmitted around the world. There, up