His huge dispute with Christina goes back to when her husband was President and he attacked former President Nestor Kirchner’s government as “immoral, illegitimate, and unjust” for not taking strong enough measures to support the nation’s poor.
Whatever his role in that chapter of Argentine history, his political role in a country polarized between President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s government and a beleaguered opposition became a central theme here a day after Bergoglio was named pope. Bergoglio, observers say, has not been shy about energetically taking on the president or her predecessor and late husband, Néstor Kirchner.
“It was never a good relation,” said Oscar Aguad, a deputy in Argentina’s congress from the opposition Radical party. “There were scraps between Bergoglio and the Kirchner governments, to the point where Nestor Kirchner even said that Bergoglio was the head of the opposition.”
Tensions between Bergoglio and the Kirchners increased during the 2000s as the couple began to guide Argentina out of an economic collapse. The Kirchners rode a wave of popularity, which critics say they used to intervene in the economy and adopt a take-no-prisoners approach to the opposition and the press. Eventually, they tussled with the Roman Catholic Church.
Observers in Argentina said Bergoglio did not act in opposition to the Kirchners’ stated goal of reducing poverty; in fact, Bergoglio emerged during the peak of the Argentine economic crisis of 2000 as a fierce critic of globalization. Rather, he was simply not shy about exposing what some critics of the government call its mendacity in reporting economic data. The church waded into this thicket not with a direct attack but by issuing its own poverty figures showing that the number of poor people was much higher than the Kirchners asserted.
“When Bergoglio talked of extreme poverty, or of the kids who are among the army of drug addicts, the government felt it was under attack because they’re in charge of anti-narcotics efforts, social programs and health care,” said Oscar Raúl Aguad, a lawmaker who opposed the Kirchners’ programs.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/bergoglio-challenged-moral-authority-of-argentinas-elected-leaders/2013/03/14/95db94f6-8ce7-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_story.html
The secular clergy of his diocese, however, love their archbishop. As auxiliary bishop in Buenos Aires in the 1990s, he managed always to be with his priests, keeping them company through crises and difficulties and showing his great capacity for listening sympathetically (I have heard many stories of Bergoglio spending hours with elderly sick priests.) He also continued to show his option for the poor by encouraging priests to step out into the deep in intellectual and artistic areas: Bergoglio has never hidden a passion for literature.
Ironically, it is the same Bergoglio who, as Jesuit provincial, demanded absolute obedience and political neutrality, as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires wants his priests to be “out on the frontiers”, as he puts it.
Cardinal Bergoglio regularly travels to the furthest ends of his three million-strong diocese to visit the poor. He wants them in the neediest barrios, in the hospitals accompanying Aids sufferers, in the popular kitchens for children.
To take one example: when, last year, a number of young people died in a fire in a rock club tragedy, Bergoglio went to their aid in the middle of the night, arriving before the police and fire service, and long before the city authorities. Since the tragedy, one of his auxiliaries has a ministry to the family and friends of the victims, and has not been backward in criticising the government for its response to the tragedy.
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Where do his political sympathies lie? Certainly not on the Left. Those who know him best would consider him on the moderate Right, close to that strand of popular
Peronism which is hostile to liberal capitalism. In the economic crisis of 2001-2002, when Argentina defaulted on its debt, people came out on to the streets and supermarkets were looted, Bergoglio was quick to denounce the neo-liberal banking system which had left Argentina with an unpayable debt.
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http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/features/2013/03/13/quiet-thunder-in-argentina/
A little more about this fire where Bergoglio rushed to the scene. It was the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires of a seven-story building housing the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association and the Delegation of the Argentine Jewish Association. Beroglio strongly condemned it and maintained very close ties with the Jewish Community.
Bergoglio has twice attended services at synagogues in Buenos Aires, Hier said, and he led a commemoration of the anniversary of Kristallnacht in his cathedral this past December.
Hier and other Jewish leaders were particularly encouraged by Bergoglio’s reaction to the 1994 terrorist attack on the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed more than 80 people.
“We are heartened by his profound statement of solidarity with the Jewish people and his identity with the pain that was caused by the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires,” Jewish Council for Public Affairs Chair Larry Gold said in a statement released on Wednesday.
Rabbi Sergio Bergman, who is the senior rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in Buenos Aires and has been a member of Buenos Aires’ city legislature since 2011, heralded Bergoglio’s selection on Twitter.
“Argentines and men and women of good will, as brothers, we celebrate the unity in diversity convened together for Francisco I,” Bergman tweeted in Spanish after hearing news of the selection.
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http://www.jewishjournal.com/religion/article/jewish_leaders_groups_welcome_pope_francisAll this is encouraging because St Francis was all about mending fences and peace.
(Reuters) - Muslims in Europe see hope for better relations with Roman Catholicism after the new pope took the name Francis, recalling the 13th-century saint known for his efforts to launch Christian dialogue with Islam.
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio chose the name after his election on Wednesday in honour of St. Francis of Assisi, who is revered for his radical poverty and humility. Francis met the sultan of Egypt in 1219 on a peace mission during the Fifth Crusade.
St. Francis crossed enemy lines unarmed to meet Sultan Malik al-Kamil and discuss war, peace and faith. He spent several days with the Muslim ruler, unsuccessfully trying to convert him, and was then returned safely to the Crusader side.
Muslim leaders in Italy, France and Germany, where St. Francis and his Franciscan order of brown-robed friars are well known, struck an upbeat tone.
"As Muslims of the West, we take as a particularly hopeful sign the reminder, in the name of the new pontiff, of the great example of sanctity and opening to the East and to Islam that St. Francis of Assisi gave," the Italian Islamic Religious Community (COREIS) said in a statement.
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http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/03/15/pope-islam-name-idINDEE92E0DA20130315
I found this interesting too
I'm sorry this was so long. Thanks for your post
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