Here are two recent articles from Argentine newspapers about the anomaly of this pope choosing not to visit his homeland more than four years since
he became pope…
Why has Pope Francis not visited Argentina nor plan to?
By Loris Zanatta
Translated from
LA NACION
July 11, 2017
Why has he gone to central Africa, to east Asia, to Sweden, Turkey and various nations in Latin America but not to his own homeland? Of course, this has raised conjectures and much controversy. But those around the pope shrug it off when asked. It’s the usual provincialism on display –‘ this pope has no time for vulgar concerns’!
But as time passes, it has become quite clear that this has been a deliberate choice, a conscious calculation. How to explain it otherwise? And by the way, those who claim this are his friends, his devotees, his numerous spokesmen: some say they have just spoken to him, some vaunt an old friendship with the man who is now pope, some speak of hearing from privileged channels. The cacophony is enormous, and the resulting circus is not good for the pope’s image. Some think:
“Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres” [There's that most useful Spanish saying a propos again!]
And all of them believe they know why the pope has refused to visit Argentina.
[It’s been more than four years, and let me repeat that John Paul II visited Poland within 9 months of his election and would visit it 9 times in 27 years, while Benedict XVI went to Germany within 4 months of his election and would visit it another 2 times.]
I really have no idea – I look on surprised and quite amused at the debate. I read a woman journalist who claims to have been friends with Bergoglio for 17 years – and she has photos that seem to confirm it. Of course, she wrote an ‘intimate’ biography of the pope, already predicting his beatification! She says she knows why he is not visiting Argentina – but she won’t reveal it! And BTW, searching through news archives, it seems that the lady has some skeletons in her closet – but it’sold news, doesn’t matter!
It could be envy, but other friends of Bergoglio
[Ah, those FOBs, the originals!] make other claims. Especially Gustavo Vera – it is inexplicable to many how an ex-Trotskyite, now running for office in the party of Cristina Kirchner, came to be a spokesman for this pope and that the pope does acknowledge him as such. He is a saint who has liberated sexual slaves, some say. He is a violent man with little to commend him and no respect for the law, his detractors say. Vera presents himself alongside Guillermo Moreno, adirer of the pope as well as of hardly orthodox ‘methods’, to use a euphemism. He was Secretary of Commerce but he hated the market: - as a bood Peronist and a good Bergoglian! Vera and Moreno are not exactly conciliatory figures, not even with each other.
What has lately stirred up protest against them and the pope is the invitation from the Vatican to the Argentine Procurator-General, Alejandra Gils Carbó, for a summit on ‘new forms of slavery’ – a scandal that cannot be explained except that she was appointed to her position by ex-President Cristina Kirchner with the intention of appropriating the nation’s judiciary, but Gils Carbó is also involved in a serious case of corruption. So to invite her to the Vatican just now does not exactly help unite Argentines with Bergoglio!
Above all, there is an old Peronist leader who claims he has a friendship with Bergoglio that dates to being together in the association called Guardias de Hierro [Iron Guards] (which was supposed to be ‘Peronist, Catholic, nationalist, anti-liberal and anti-Marxist’) and who seems to live on TV where he is a constant presence. The pope, he says “remains very great’ to all Argentines!
Hebe de Bonafini, who began as one of those heroic mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
[a square facing the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, where the relatives of the ‘desparecidos’ during the military dictatorship of the 1980s used to demonstrate regularly] and now more ‘famous’ for her verbal incontinence [Gee, sounds familiar!], wrote the pope after having met him [addressing him in the familiar second-person plural typically used by Argentines, rather than the formal third-person singular]: “I know that you think that by coming to Argentina, you would be doing a favor to Pastor Mauricio”. [dim=8pt [A derogatory term for anti-Peronist President Mauricio Macri, who is persona non grata to Bergoglio.] Did the pope really say that? In which case, is he ‘punishing’ Argentines for having elected a rich man President and not a Peronist ‘man of the people’? I think not, but who knows?
But Mons. Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, man of science and the Roman Curia, from a ‘nationalist’ Argentine family, showed no doubts at all in a recent interview where he said
the pope is not visiting Argentina in order not to deepen ‘la grieta’ [fissure], not to rub salt on the wound that has divided the nation since time immemorial. Is that possible? Can an authority whose mission is to reconcile, pacify and calm down passions, cause or aggravate discord in his own nation? But that’s the way it seems. His friends are sure: It is the Argentines themselves who must be blamed for his decision not to visit Argentina!
Well, we human beings are weak and sinful. But does the pope not have a responsibility if his figure divides not just Argentina but Catholics around the world? If his friends are those we have described, is his heart beats only ‘one way’, if he has solutions for everyting (from climate change to retirement pensions, from employment to immigration, from poverty to development), if he blesses some people and condemns everyone else, it is nor surprising that he divides more than he unites. Yet politics was devised precisely to deal with all his apparent priority concerns.
Meanwhile, why he chooses not to visit Argentina remains a mystery.
Why hasn't the pope visited Argentina?
By Ricardo Roa
Translated from CLARIN
June 27, 2017
BUENOS AIRES — Since he began his papacy more than four years ago, Pope Francis has traveled frequently, visiting countries of all shapes and sizes, from the powerful United States and France to more overlooked places like Sri Lanka and Bosnia.
Whatever the political orientation of the host government — be it centrist or conservative, socialist or populist — Francis has been there. Mexico, Cuba, Turkey, Armenia, Uganda, South Korea, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Albania ... 25 countries in all so far!
But guess where the Pope hasn't been? His home country: Argentina. He's come close, visiting neighboring Brazil and Paraguay. He went to Ecuador too. And recently he announced plans for another trip to South America, this time with stops planned in Colombia, Chile and Peru. But still, no Argentina. The fact is, nobody knows when or even if he will come here. Isn't it strange?
Francis — or Jorge Bergoglio, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires — does the same thing in Rome that he used to do here:
He keeps an eye on politics and the inner workings of Peronism, the political ideology espoused by the previous president, leftist Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015), and most of the country's other leaders in recent decades. He reads and asks all the time about what is happening in Argentina, and always seeks contacts and direct links. He practices rapprochement, as it were.
He sends greetings on birthdays, writes to his old school chums, telephones abuse victims, and sends text messages to support people involved in the fight against human trafficking. He speaks with words and gestures, and especially gestures that define him politically. He sent a rosary to the detained neighborhood-association activist Milagro Sala, and
acts as an informal patriarch of Peronism, sending everyone the letters and instructions they expect to receive from him.
At such times, the pope reverts to being "Padre Jorge," the Peronist priest. That he sometimes draws comparisons to Gen. Juan Perón himself — the former leader of Argentina (1956-1955 and 1973-1974) and founding father of Peronism — is no coincidence.
He is the same old Father Jorge when he talks about or
waits on leading figures of the Kirchner faction who were contemptuous of him even after he became pope, or when he insisted on scowling while meeting with Argentina's current president, the conservative Mauricio Macri.
Four years of not returning to his country may or may not seem a long time, depending on one's perspective. But here in Argentina, it feels like we've been waiting forever. We see him as our Pope, after all. It's Bergoglio's decision to make, of course. And presumably there's a reason for the delay. But it's hard to imagine what it could be. At any rate, only he knows.
Perhaps the Pope doesn't want to show any favoritism. He didn't visit when Mrs. Kirchner was president, so he won't visit during Macri's term in office either. Then again, he could come and make a point of meeting both leaders — as a way to even things out. And what if Macri is reelected in 2019? Will Francis never visit again?
It could be too that the Pope worries about
la grieta," as Argentina's deep political divisions are known. Maybe he worries that if he comes, he'll end up being used by one side or the other. But what if the opposite happened? What if his enormous prestige and popularity helped mitigate the political fight while boosting the Church's wider efforts to moderate Argentine politics?
Presumably there's a reason for the delay. But it's hard to imagine what it could be.
Outside of Argentina, Francis has proved to be an able mediator: between Cuba and the United States, or between the Colombian state and guerrillas. [Both questionable, both as to the extent of his ‘mediation’ and to the outcome of the mediation.] He can pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and, while there, embrace a Jewish rabbi and Muslim imam — both from Argentina. That's because building bridges is precisely what the Supreme Pontiff does.
Except when it comes to his countrymen, he won't.
Outside our country, the pope has worked to close rifts and bring faiths nearer. He has carefully attended to the Church and its efforts across the globe.
No doubt people in other countries are wondering why Francis doesn't visit his native land. Frankly, here in Argentina we don't know what to do to get him to visit. It shouldn't be that way. But it is, God knows why — and Francis, of course.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/07/2017 12:37]