The Great Reformer

by Austen Ivereigh

  Although he would in time have two secretaries to help manage his correspondence and calls, he kept his own diary and usually phoned directly. Unlike most archbishops, Bergoglio did not have a “private” secretary—usually a priest—to shadow him, and he continued to move around the city by public transportation and on foot, turning up alone, usually in a simple priest’s suit.

  Having power meant a capacity to act, to make things happen. But with it came many temptations—above all the lure of the efficiency god—which were fatal for a pastor, for they distanced him from his sheep and made him foreign to the poor. Jesus showed his disciples how to act against that temptation on the night of the Last Supper before he died, when—as recounted in John’s Gospel—he got onto his hands and knees to clean his disciples’ feet.

  Not long before Easter that first year as archbishop, Bergoglio called the chaplain of the Muñíz Hospital in Buenos Aires—the national center for the treatment of infectious conditions—and asked if he could say the Holy Thursday Mass there. “I’d like to be there. Can I?” he asked. When the archbishop arrived, Father Andrés Tello explained that eight of ten of the patients had AIDS; they had an average age of twenty-eight; many were drug addicts or prostitutes; some were transgender. “I told him that while the Gospel talks about twelve male apostles, here we had men and women as well as transvestites, but he said: ‘you choose them, I’ll wash their feet,’” recalls the priest.

  The Mass was very emotional. Everyone was in tears. He gave Communion to every one of them. And when he finished, he said: “Now I want to take Communion to those who couldn’t attend because they are bed-bound.” The patients were totally overwhelmed to have a bishop kissing and hugging them. He always insisted to us that when you’re a priest, you’re a priest for everyone, and that we should use generous criteria when giving the Sacraments.

  Thereafter, every Holy Thursday, Bergoglio always went to a prison, or home of the elderly, or a hospital to wash the feet of the poor.19

  * * *

  FOR Bergoglio, haunted by the final pages of the theologian Henri de Lubac’s Meditations sur l’Église, the worst thing to happen to the Church was spiritual worldliness. “It is what Jesus saw going on among the Pharisees: ‘You who glorify yourselves. Who give glory to yourselves, the ones to the others,’” he told his priests in 1999, before quoting de Lubac’s description of spiritual worldliness as “something infinitely more disastrous than any worldliness of the purely moral order.” It was a form of religious anthropocentrism, using the Church for temporal ends—for political or personal gain—so turning it into an instrument of human maneuvering, and in the process obscuring the face of Christ that the Church exists to reveal.20

  After Quarracino’s death, Bergoglio uncovered an elaborate network of spiritual worldliness stretching from the Church in Buenos Aires to the Vatican via the Casa Rosada.

  Quarracino had accepted many government favors—including funds for his foundation—and Bergoglio was expected to do the same. When he flew to Rome in June to receive from John Paul II the pallium, a narrow band of wool with black crosses that symbolizes the link between the pope and the major dioceses, the Casa Rosada sent him a first-class ticket. Bergoglio walked across the square to ask them to change it to coach class. (“I don’t get Bergoglio,” Caselli was said to have remarked. “You try to help him and he just throws it back in your face.”) Menem had a similar experience when he sent two of his men to sound out Bergoglio on the president’s bid to alter the constitution so that he could run for a third term. They never found out, because the archbishop wasn’t willing to discuss it. But the assumption that he would be spoke volumes.

  The Caselli-Sandri-Sodano nexus allowed the Menem government to offset the chill of domestic criticism from the Argentine bishops with warmth from the Vatican. The three men were linked by a dense network of entwined interests. Caselli, a Menem strongman with broad business dealings, had found jobs for Sandri’s nephews in the Argentine intelligence service and saved Sodano’s brother’s construction business. Two weeks before the legislative elections of October 1997, Caselli through Sodano arranged for Menem to meet John Paul II; and on May 25, 1998, Argentina’s national day, Caselli organized a Mass by the secretary of state at which Sodano spoke of the “permanent and warm relations between Argentines and the pope,” remarks that the Menem government ensured were widely reported as papal backing for him. (That was in turn countered by a brief statement from the bishops deploring the attempt to use religion for political ends, and specifically the attempt to suggest that the pope supported the Menem administration.)21

  Another challenge for Bergoglio lay in the close links that had grown up between the archdiocese and a large and distinguished Catholic family, the Trussos, whom Quarracino knew well from his old diocese of La Plata. The family included Father Alfredo Trusso, a pioneer of post-Vatican Council liturgical reform who produced an Argentine translation of the Bible for popular use; and his brother, Francisco (“Paco”) Trusso, whom Quarracino persuaded Menem to appoint as Argentina’s ambassador to the Holy See between 1992 and 1997. Paco’s sons, Francisco Javier and Pablo, were directors and shareholders of the La Plata–based Banco de Crédito Provincial (BCP). A third brother, Juan Miguel Trusso, was legal adviser to the bank and vice president of the diocesan charity agency Caritas.

  The Trussos were prodigious donors to, and fund-raisers for, the Church, channeling donations and gifts, and giving or lending money to fund many diocesan projects. The archdiocese had a number of accounts in the Trussos’ bank—as it did in seven other banks.

  Quarracino was especially close to the director of the BCP, Francisco Javier Trusso, with whom he had almost a father-son relationship. The cardinal relied not just on his technical advice and help, but on the BCP’s line of credit, which allowed, for example, small Catholic organizations to borrow money via the diocese. As the court papers would later reveal, a stream of cash channeled via Trusso also paid for the flights and hotels enjoyed by Quarracino and his two assistants, Monsignor Robert Toledo and Norberto Silva, on their trips abroad. What was also revealed was the way that Quarracino frequently used his authority and contacts to help the Trussos’ business.

  In 1996, for example, Quarracino helped to secure a major account for the BCP, a large military pension fund called the Sociedad Militar Seguro de Vida (SMSV). At a meeting at the curia at which Francisco Javier and Monsignor Toledo, Quarracino’s private secretary, were also present, the cardinal assured the SMSV’s president, Captain Eduardo Trejo Lema, that the Trussos were honorable and pious people in whom the Church had complete trust. After Trejo Lema opened an account at the BCP, he was fêted in Rome by the Argentine ambassador, Trusso père, who arranged for him to attend Mass said by John Paul II and to meet the pope afterward; and at Cardinal Quarracino’s request, Trejo Lema was admitted to the prestigious chivalric order, the Knights of Malta.

  Trejo Lema was later approached by Francisco Javier Trusso, the BCP’s vice president, who asked him for a six-month $10 million loan to the archdiocese; the BCP, explained Trusso, was unable to provide the capital at that time but would underwrite the loan. The captain agreed, and the funds were transferred at the end of June 1997 to a diocesan account in the BCP. That account, it later transpired, was in the red by close to $9 million as a result of two checks signed on behalf of the archdiocese by Monsignor Toledo, who did not have the proper authorization to do so.

  A few weeks later, a TV documentary revealed that the BCP was hugely in debt and had a massive liquidity gap. After the Central Bank refused to bail it out, the bank collapsed, leaving at least twenty thousand furious clients. The SMSV expected the return of its $10 million because the loan had been made to the diocese; but when it approached the cardinal’s office, Monsignor Toledo told them that the signatures were not authentic and that there was no money to pay them back. Quarracino, who insisted that he had never signed any papers taking out a loan, was appalled. The stress and publicity triggered his
illness and, it was thought, contributed to his death shortly afterward.

  A police investigation was launched from La Plata. Francisco Javier Trusso fled to Brazil, where he was later caught and jailed, but escaped. Pablo Trusso spent six months in jail but was released. Juan Miguel Trusso spent three weeks in jail, then was acquitted, without any charges. Monsignor Toledo was jailed for three days.

  After he became archbishop in February 1998 Bergoglio hired an international accountancy firm to do a thorough audit of the diocesan finances. It showed that the archdiocese regularly ignored both canon law and the Argentine bishops’ own guidelines for monitoring and authorizing payments. As a result of its report, Bergoglio instituted a radical cleanup. He sold the archdiocese’s shares in other banks in order to sever inappropriate links, and instituted strict accountability and transparency procedures.

  Meanwhile, the SMSV was suing the diocese for the return of its $10 million. In December 1998, the police raided the curia, carrying off boxes of files following a court deposition; the investigating judge had tipped off the press in order to embarrass the diocese. Father Marcó, the young priest Bergoglio had gotten to know soon after being made an auxiliary, received a call from his archbishop. “He was very calm, but said if I had a minute would I mind coming down there because there was a whole pack of journalists at the door.” Marcó organized the first press conference on behalf of the new archbishop.

  As result of the hearings which followed, the SMSV dropped its case against the diocese and both issued a joint statement saying they had been swindled. The auditor’s report commissioned by Bergoglio was so thorough that it left no questions hanging, and the archbishop’s reputation was, if anything, enhanced by his handling of the affair.

  The scandal, along with other dubious practices Bergoglio discovered after taking over from Quarracino, influenced many of his addresses in his first year, which reflected his determination to purify his clergy of any attempt to use the Church for personal gain. In a 1999 talk to clergy, for example, he challenged his priests to ask themselves if they were mediators or intermediaries. A mediator, he said, was a bridge, who brought others together at his own expense. An intermediary, on the other hand, was one who profited at the expense of others. In both cases, a priest stands between, in the middle; yet there was a world of difference. The mediator is a pastor whose evangelizing fervor is born of an encounter with Christ, who grows in his belonging to God’s holy faithful people, whereas an intermediary is a “state cleric,” a functionary in whom the fervor has long died and who lives mainly for himself.22

  In an article he wrote in 1991 but did not publish until much later, Bergoglio used de Lubac’s treatise to distinguish between sin and corruption. While sin could always be forgiven, corruption could not be, because in a corrupt soul there was no desire for forgiveness. Corruption grows, infects others, and then justifies itself. When a corrupt person has power, he will always implicate other people, bringing them down to his level and making them accomplices, yet, like the Pharisees, he will be an assiduous adherent of norms and rules. Corruption, Bergoglio said, was intrinsically proselytizing; it generates a culture—a moralizing, self-justifying culture of good manners that looks down on others.23

  The inquiry into the collapse of the BCP still goes on, but after 17 years has been unable to substantiate the lurid allegations circulating at the time: almost all those involved have been either acquitted or never charged. When Francisco Javier Trusso was arrested after two years on the run, he was hiding in a house in Pinamar that belonged to the sister of the Argentine Vatican official, Archbishop Leonardo Sandri. Trusso was sentenced to eight years but was freed following a personal guarantee by the Buenos Aires auxiliary Héctor Aguer, who in 1998 was made archbishop of La Plata.

  In 2000 Sandri became Sodano’s sostituto, or number two, in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. Caselli, a lavish entertainer who would soon launch a career as an Italian senator, would often lament, with Aguer, the way Bergoglio focused on social, rather than moral, issues.24

  * * *

  IN October 1998, just before the police raid on the curia, Bergoglio brought the diocese together by celebrating two vast outdoor Masses in one day. The celebrations close to the zoo in Palermo were attended by close to one hundred thousand people. Huge numbers were confirmed: five hundred priests laid their hands on eight thousand children in the morning, twelve thousand young people and adults in the afternoon; Bergoglio himself confirmed dozens of disabled. “The success of evangelization hangs on the witness of unity which the Church gives,” he said in his homily. “You who have been confirmed can and must now witness to Jesus.”25

  Assuming he would be in the saddle until the age of seventy-five, Bergoglio was likely to have twelve or thirteen years as archbishop. As he put in place his strategic priorities from 1999 to 2000, he began to emerge—with Father Marcó’s help—from the shadows into public life, but he would continue to be known as publicity-shy and aloof. It was a time of deepening economic and political crisis. In October 1999, a new government made up of Radicals and dissident Peronists (known as the Alliance) took power. The new president, the conservative Radical Fernando de la Rúa, offered much the same neoliberal economic policy as Menem’s but promised to clean up government and balance the books. That turned out to be a pipe dream: the economy continued to shrink, and de la Rúa had neither the vision nor the political capital to turn it around. When the crisis of December 2001 struck, he would be forced to abandon the Casa Rosada by helicopter to escape the angry crowds.

  If Bergoglio’s overall priority was combating spiritual worldliness wherever he found it, he had four major areas he wanted to develop: the poor, politics, education, and dialogue with other Churches and faiths.

  The option for the poor ran through all his pastoral, educational, or political policies and was key to his own choices and witness. But it was also a priority in itself. It meant focusing resources and efforts in deprived areas. He would increase from eight to twenty-six the number of slum priests and spend at least an afternoon a week in the villas. But as the crisis affected the lower middle class, above all, especially after 2001, he would mobilize Catholics to deliver material help through food kitchens and material assistance. While the state shrank, the Church in Buenos Aires hugely expanded its activity, building schools, clinics, and drug rehab centers. The option for the poor also meant lending his authority to helping unprotected or vulnerable groups—garbage collectors, prostitutes, trafficked workers, undocumented migrants—to organize, as well as using his authority and access to the media to influence public policy: in 2000, for example, he called for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants. The annual San Cayetano Mass became the locus of his messages to workers and the jobless; the Plaza de la Constitución Mass was when he spoke to and about trafficked workers and prostitutes; while the annual Mass of the Lord’s Supper became a chance to focus on other vulnerable groups: prisoners, the elderly, the disabled, the addicted, the sick.

  The second priority was a critique of power and the renewal of public life. In keeping with the bishops’ conference new policy, Bergoglio put clear blue water between the Church and government, turning the traditional Te Deum—a traditional Catholic prayer of thanksgiving—on Argentina’s national day, May 25, into a chance to challenge and teach political leaders on behalf of the pueblo. He also placed the Church at the service of political renewal. In 2000 he began to organize meetings of public leaders across the political spectrum to rebuild trust, strengthen institutions, and get politicians to focus on the common good, a set of aims that came under the umbrella of the culture of encounter. He drew on Catholic social teaching, the four principles he had developed to assist him in his own leadership, as well as his deep thinking about Guardini’s concept of contrasts, to help his country build a new political culture, one based on pluralism and dialogue and concern for the common good. In the wake of the 2001 meltdown, the Church became, in effect, the host space for the
national recovery.

  The third priority was improving and increasing access to the education offered by the Church through its schools, including the teaching of Catholic faith, known as catechesis. In 1998 Bergoglio created a Vicariate for Education to coordinate the expansion. In less than a decade, the diocese’s schools went from forty-four to sixty-six, and student numbers grew by 80 percent to nearly forty thousand—four times more than private or state schools in the same period. Bergoglio made the inspiration and education of teachers and catechists a major priority, and his carefully crafted annual addresses were an opportunity to develop the culture of the People of God.

  If those three priorities can be seen as developments of his previous concerns or passions as provincial and rector in the Society of Jesus, the fourth was wholly new but would become one of the most outstanding achievements of his time as archbishop. From an initial, modest gathering of members of other churches and faiths in 2000, when they planted an olive tree in the Plaza de Mayo, an impressive network of relationships with Jews and Muslims and evangelical Christians came into being that went far beyond what ordinarily passes for interreligious or ecumenical dialogue.

  As the BCP scandal had shown, Bergoglio needed a way of liaising with the media: avoiding Quarracino’s media débacles was not enough. He agreed to a proposal by Father Marcó and a young communications expert, Roberto da Busti, for a professional press office. It was a strategic operation that focused on building relationships of trust with media proprietors, meeting the demand for stories while at the same time helping to shape them. Bergoglio supported the strategy but wanted to remain in the dark. “He wanted to communicate, but he didn’t want it to be him,” says Da Busti. “We called him el gato [“the cat”] because he was always slipping away.” Bergoglio would speak, and leave Marcó to answer the questions. Marcó’s job, joked José María Poirier, editor of the Catholic monthly Criterio, was to interpret his boss’s long silences.26