PAUL VALLELY ‘He’s a person who’s caused a lot of problems’ The future Pope Francis was perceived by some Jesuits as divisive when he was their Provincial in Argentina. Now a new book reveals just how Jorge Mario Bergoglio alienated many of his confrères with his conservatism and hostility to liberation theology As soon as the name of the new Pope had been announced, the internet buzzed with emails. Who was Jorge Mario Bergoglio? What was he like? Members of the Jesuit order were particular targets for these inquiries. What many replied was far from flattering. One of the most senior figures in the Society of Jesus, a serving Provincial in another Latin American country, wrote this: “Yes I know Bergoglio. He’s a person who’s caused a lot of problems in the society and is highly controversial in his own country. In addition to being accused of having allowed the arrest of two Jesuits during the time of the Argentinian dictatorship, as provincial he generated divided loyalties: some groups almost worshipped him, while others would have nothing to do with him, and he would hardly speak to them. It was an absurd situation. “He is well-trained and very capable, but is surrounded by this personality cult which is extremely divisive. He has an aura of spirituality which he uses to obtain power. It will be a catastrophe for the Church to have someone like him in the Apostolic See. He left the Society of Jesus in Argentina destroyed with Jesuits divided and institutions destroyed and financially broken. We have spent two decades trying to fix the chaos that the man left us.” Given the otherwise universal acclaim that greeted the election of Pope Francis – the simple and humble Pope for the poor who would restore integrity to a compromised Church – this constituted an extraordinary counterblast. And it was far from a lone voice inside the religious order in which Jorge Mario Bergoglio was formed and was a leading figure – first as provincial and then as rector of the order’s main seminary – until the age of 50. Within hours an instruction had gone out from head office, the Jesuit Curia in Rome, ordering Jesuits around the world to be prudent in their recollections and keep to themselves any unhappy memories they had of the new Pope. What could create such strength of feeling? From his early years, Bergoglio was highly regarded, by his fellows and his superiors alike. So much so that he was made provincial at the age of just 36, just three months after taking his final vows. It was 1973 and a time when a polarisation had occurred, and then Book extract 4 | THE TABLET | 10 August 2013 deepened, between progressive and conservative factions within the Argentinian Jesuits. The two sides were divided over how the changes of the Second Vatican Council should impact upon their work. Traditionalists wanted no change to their work educating the children of the country’s rich elite. The new thinkers wanted to focus on the poor in the slums, embracing the notion from the newly emerging liberation theology that they must be empowered economically and politically as well as spiritually. Bergoglio’s predecessor as provincial, Fr Ricardo “Dick” O’Farrell, was a sociologist who had embraced the changes of Vatican II. He was open to new ideas, including liberation theology. He supported base communities where biblical interpretation and liturgy were designed by ordinary people. He encouraged Jesuits like Fr Orlando Yorio and Fr Franz Jalics to work in the slums – from which they would be kidnapped by the military in an incident which has cast a shadow over Bergoglio’s ministry ever since. But O’Farrell presided over a dramatic decline in vocations. Jesuits unhappy with the rapid pace of change in the order staged a rebellion in which a number of them complained to the superior general in Rome about their provincial. They petitioned that O’Farrell should be removed from office. The Jesuit Curia in Rome, fearful of the division that was being caused in the Argentinian province, acceded to their request. O’Farrell was removed. The coup put in his place Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Though Bergoglio went on to become the first Pope who had been ordained as priest after the Second Vatican Council, his formation was essentially pre-Vatican II in its style and content. He immediately set about reversing many of O’Farrell’s reforms. O’Farrell had had the chapel at the order’s seminary remodelled and replastered so that the traditional church looked like an awesome giant white cave – intended to feel like the inside of Moses’ tent in the desert – totally unadorned save for a great dark crucifix. Bergoglio hated it and swiftly installed a statue of the Virgin and a “more reverential” tabernacle. But that was only the start. As provincial, then later as Pope, he made changes in the liturgy, replacing modern Vatican II songs with pre-conciliar songs, psalms and plainchant. He introduced the service of Lauds, which is not part of the Jesuit tradition and which many in the society did not like. “He tried to make us more like a religious order, wearing surplices and singing the office,” said one student, Miguel Mom Debussy. He introduced a fixed schedule for the students and insisted on integrating manual labour into their formation, recalled Fr Humberto Miguel Yáñez, who is now head of moral theology at the Gregorian University in Rome. O’Farrell had been a modernising influence on everyday clothing, allowing students and priests to wear non-clerical clothing; Bergoglio put an end to that, insisting on clerical collars instead. He himself wore a cassock, something only older members of the community routinely had done. There were changes too in the curriculum. Bergoglio instructed the teachers of moral theology appointed by O’Farrell to revert to a textbook in Latin, even though many of the novices now had no Latin. He brought in conservative lay professors to replace teachers he considered too progressive. Among those sacked was the theology lecturer Fr Orlando Yorio, his own former teacher and one of the Jesuits kidnapped by the military in 1976. Books by the other kidnapped Jesuit, Fr Franz Jalics, were purged from reading lists and withdrawn from the college library. “Liberation theology was actually forbidden,” said another student, Fr Rafael Velasco, who is now the rector of the Catholic University of Córdoba. O’Farrell had encouraged seminarians to study not just philosophy and theology but also sociology, politics, anthropology, engineering, even, in one case, solar engineering. “This was absolutely discouraged by Bergoglio,” said Velasco. Most intolerable to many in the society, Begoglio handed control of one of the country’s Jesuit universities to a right-wing organisation called Guardia de Hierro (the Iron Guard) to which he was spiritual adviser. That, said Fr Guillermo Marcó, who was for eight years Bergoglio’s aide, “is something for which many Jesuits have never forgiven him”. The young provincial did not ignore the poor. In those days the Jesuits ran two schools inside the Colegio del Salvador in Buenos Aires. One was for the wealthy, who paid, and the other for poorer children, who did not. “My sons went there,” said Bergoglio’s old friend, the human-rights lawyer Alicia Oliveira. “Bergoglio closed down the free school and moved all the poor children into the rich one. He did not tell the parents.” But he insisted that Jesuits were selective in their contact with poor communities. “Our only duties there were religious,” recalled Velasco. “We had nothing to do with unions or cooperatives or even Catholic NGOs … His relationship with the poor was pastoral but patronising. It was to soften the consequences of injustice rather than to tackle the causes.” When the Society of Jesus held its watershed thirty-second General Congregation in 1975, which pledged the Jesuits to see fighting for the poor as a constitutive part of their evangelistic mission, Bergoglio was not happy. He warned senior members of the Argentinian province that “the price of violence is always paid by the weakest” and his seminarians found the subject was not to feature in their studies. “We never heard anything about it at all,” recalled Mom Debussy. Jesuits were told they could work only in conventional parishes rather than the new base communities. The new provincial was a dynamic figure and strong leader. An Irish Jesuit, Fr James Kelly, who was living in the Buenos Aires house in those years, remembers “a very spiritual man with strong convictions”. But his charismatic style of leadership brought problems. “If you liked him and he liked you, you’d be in a good position,” said Fr Velasco. “But if he didn’t like you, you were in for some kind of trouble. And if you didn’t agree with him, you’d be relegated outside the circle of power.” Eventually the depth of the divisions among the Argentinian Jesuits was noted by Rome. So was the fact that the Argentinian province was not marching in unison with the rest of the society in Latin America. The Superior General, Pedro Arrupe, sent one of his assis-tants out from Rome to Buenos Aires in 1977 to talk to Bergoglio but the young provincial was unrepentant. In the years that followed, Bergoglio’s stances became increasingly dogmatic, the more so after John Paul II became Pope, according to his former aide, Miguel Mom Debussy. Opposition to him within the province began to grow as post-Vatican II attitudes consolidated within the order and as, in 1983, Argentina’s military junta fell. “Other members of the teaching staff were more open to new methods in philosophical and social matters,” said Rafael Velasco. “Those opposed to him were in the majority by the 1980s. He was [by then] rector but he was quite isolated.” When his term of office ended in 1986 the polarisation within the Jesuits – between Bergoglianos and anti-Bergoglianos – was such that the Jesuits’ new Superior General in Rome, Fr Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, decided that it would be best if he was removed from Argentina for a period. When he returned six months later he was installed in a Jesuit community in Buenos Aires and given a parttime teaching job. But tensions began to arise. Bergoglio seemed to have forgotten he was no longer provincial or rector. The meddlesome priest was packed off to what the new provincial, Fr Victor Zorzín, called “a more tranquil place” – Argentina’s second city, Córdoba, some 400 miles away. It was, said Fr Guillermo Marcó, “a place of humility and humiliation”. But there a remarkable transformation occurred, which was the beginning of the long transition from conservative authoritarian to humble Pope of the poor. ■Extracted from Pope Francis: untying the knots by Paul Vallely, published by Bloomsbury at £12.99. Next week: what changed Bergoglio.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 01:05:50 +0000
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