The Pope

by Anthony McCarten

  The de la Cuadras searched tirelessly for information and finally caught a break in May 1977, when a series of anonymous phone calls and notes slipped under the door of the family home began to offer hope. Several of the messages reported the same thing over a period of two months: the couple was alive and Elena was still pregnant. In July, the family received word that Elena had given birth to a baby girl on June 16, but the child had been taken away after just four days. It was a bittersweet blow, but the knowledge that the baby was alive spurred the family to continue searching and prompted Elena’s mother, Alicia, to begin protesting alongside the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, where she cofounded the sister group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo with other women whose grandchildren had been taken when their daughters gave birth in prison.

  When the news dried up, the de la Cuadras, like many families of the disappeared, turned to the church for help. Their local priest suggested they speak with Monsignor Emilio Grasselli, private secretary to the head of the military chaplaincy, Archbishop Adolfo Servando Tortolo, who informed them that he had no information on their son, Roberto José, because he had disappeared “a long time ago,” but that Elena was being detained outside La Plata.

  That was all they could get from Grasselli—it would later transpire that he kept a list of the disappeared for the chaplaincy, with crosses marked next to the names of those confirmed dead by the military.

  The family then sent Soledad, another of the de la Cuadra sisters, who lived in exile in Italy, the information and asked her to visit the Rome office of the superior general of the Jesuits, Pedro Arrupe, with whom the family had a long-standing relationship. Arrupe obliged and passed their case to the provincial superior for Argentina, Jorge Bergoglio.

  Elena’s father, Roberto, met with Bergoglio to explain the situation, and Bergoglio suggested that Mario Picchi, auxiliary bishop of La Plata, could possibly help, as he was well connected with the military in that area. Bergoglio gave de la Cuadra a brief handwritten note of introduction to take to Picchi. It read, “He [de la Cuadra] will explain to you what this is about, and I will appreciate anything that you can do.”

  Batted from one office to another, ad nauseam, Roberto Senior traveled to La Plata and, again, explained the details of his missing children. Picchi assured him, “It’s okay, I’m going to see Tabernero.” This was Colonel Reynaldo Tabernero, deputy chief of the Buenos Aires police. His chief was Colonel Ramón Camps, after whom the network of torture centers known as Camps Circuits was named—and for whom Christian von Wernich worked as chief confessor.

  When Picchi reported back to the family, he did not have good news. Tabernero had informed him that Elena’s child had been given to a “good family” who would raise her well. When asked about Roberto Junior, they were told not to inquire again. Picchi also checked with Enrique Rospide, an intelligence liaison, who confirmed what Tabernero had said, adding that the situation with the adults, including Elena and Héctor, was “irreversible.”

  In 2010, the National Commission for the Right to Identity and the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo received information about a young woman who could potentially be the daughter of a disappeared person. After an investigation, the case was referred to the specialist unit of the attorney general’s office, which was dealing with the appropriation of children during the Dirty War. The young woman, now living abroad, voluntarily submitted herself for DNA testing, and on August 21, 2014, it was confirmed that she was the daughter of Héctor Baratti and Elena de la Cuadra.

  It was later revealed that Elena had given birth on the floor of the kitchen at a police station on June 16, 1977. Witnesses who survived the torture camps recalled Elena and Héctor pleading with von Wernich to spare their child, to which he replied, “The sins of the parents shall be visited upon the children.” The reality was clear. There was no way the couple would ever be released, and they would soon be executed. In the final moments with their baby, they placed all their hopes that she might still be saved into the last free choice they had left: their daughter’s name. They christened her Ana Libertad: Anna Freedom.

  Her father’s remains were discovered in an unmarked mass grave and identified by forensic anthropologists in 2009. He had been thrown from a death flight into the sea.

  Her mother’s body was never found.

  * * *

  Reverend Rubén Capitano, a priest who had studied with von Wernich as a young seminarian, gave perhaps one of the most honest testimonies ever given by a cleric when he said, “The attitude of the church was scandalously close to the dictatorship to such an extent that I would say it was of a sinful degree. [The church] was like a mother that did not look for her children. It did not kill anybody, but it did not save anybody, either.” Such thoughts would always be shared by the de la Cuadra family after they went to Jorge Bergoglio for help looking for their own child.

  On the surface, the case is just another example of Bergoglio using the “ecclesiastical hierarchy” to deal with inquiries into disappeared persons. This would have remained the opinion were it not for a second testimony he was ordered to give in 2010 at the federal court investigation into the death of Elena de la Cuadra and many others held prisoner at ESMA. Just as he had tangled himself up in a web of lies when he fervently declared that the internal Catholic documents had been published complete and uncensored, Bergoglio was once more revealed to be lying about the true chronology—how much he knew and when he discovered it. When questioned by lawyers as to when he first heard that the junta was removing babies born to detained mothers and selling them off to wealthy families, he replied, “Recently, about ten years ago [2000],” before correcting himself and saying, “No, it must have been around the time of the military junta trial [which began in 1985].”

  Admittedly, the handwritten note Bergoglio sent to Picchi does not give any details of Elena’s pregnancy, only that her father would fill the priest in on the situation when they met. The de la Cuadra family is adamant, however, that Roberto Senior would have informed Bergoglio of Elena’s condition, just as they informed Picchi before he returned with devastating news.

  THE ROAD TO CÓRDOBA

  The charges laid against Jorge Mario Bergoglio are inextricably linked to the people he is accused of harming, and so long as pain is still felt by those alive to speak out, there will be no clean slate for him. Suspicions have and will always linger over what he did or did not do during the Dirty War. In situations such as this, “innocent until proven guilty” will never apply, perhaps in part because the secrecy with which the junta carried out its campaign of genocide on the Argentine people has created a culture of suspicion within the society as a whole. A lack of answers will always lead to speculation. But what is especially remarkable is that out of the ashes, Bergoglio was able to emerge reborn and go on. While grief still lingered in the hearts of many parents and children, Bergoglio was off in Rome being elected pope. So one has to ask, how on earth does someone with such a checkered past manage to succeed to the ultimate office within the Catholic Church?

  There is one period in Bergoglio’s life that stands out from all the others as a true Damascene moment worthy of Saint Paul himself. This occurred in 1990, when he was removed from his teaching post in Buenos Aires and exiled to the Jesuit residence in the city of Córdoba.

  Several other priests were exiled at the same time, to other provinces and even as far as Europe, as the new provincial superior, Víctor Zorzín, carried out his own “purge” of the Jesuits. But this time, instead of removing leftists, as Bergoglio had done, Zorzín was expunging Bergoglians. As for Bergoglio himself, the theory went that by removing the man considered by many to be the cause of the internal backbiting and friction that had built up since the conference at Medellín, they could return the Jesuits to a unified and peaceful society. Therefore, those loyal to the newly labeled persona non grata were instructed not to have any contact with him—according to his biographer and friend Elisabetta Piqué, “Bergoglio’s telephone call
s were censored and his correspondence controlled”—and malicious rumors were spread about the reason for his banishment. Father Angel Rossi, a young Jesuit who had been accepted into the society by Bergoglio in 1976, recalled hearing that Bergoglio had fallen so spectacularly from grace that “the man who had been provincial of the Society so young, so brilliant, had ended up in Córdoba because he was sick, crazy.”

  Bergoglio was not, as gossip would have people believe, suffering some kind of breakdown, but a darkness came over him in the two years he spent in Córdoba. When reflecting on this period five months after becoming pope, he explained, “I lived a time of great interior crisis when I was in Córdoba.” In an attempt to explain what he went through, he said in a 2010 interview, “What hurts me the most are the many occasions when I have not been more understanding and impartial.… But I must emphasize, I was always loved by God. He lifted me up when I fell along the way, He helped me travel through it all, especially during the toughest periods, and so I learned.”

  Listening to the sorrows and sins of regular parishioners was the ideal cure for any form of self-pity with respect to his own circumstances. He engaged on a meaningful and personal level with the local population—a somewhat ironic twist of fate considering the years he spent restricting the villa miseria priests back in Buenos Aires. Primarily, however, it was, as Bergoglio recalled, “a time of purification that God sometimes permits. It is a dark time, when one does not see much. I prayed a lot, I read, I wrote quite a bit and lived my life. It was something of the inner life. Beyond being a confessor or a spiritual director, what I did in Córdoba had more to do with my inner life.”

  THE POSTER BOY FOR ATONEMENT

  Day by day he pieced himself back together, but as he did so, he began to understand that the pieces no longer fitted the man he had been before; sides that had once been straight were now curved, and vice versa. His published theological reflections from this time are profoundly connected to feelings of exile and pain, loneliness and marginalization. Although he maintained the rather Victorian etiquette, so favored by the Catholic Church, that it is not polite to talk about oneself, his later insistence that these works were produced with a general view of faith, rather than a personal reflection on his own suffering, is belied by the tone of passages such as “Between feelings and thoughtlessness, between grace and sin, between obedience and rebellion, our flesh feels the exile to which it is subject, the walk it is obliged to make, and it struggles for itself, to defend this hope.”

  Torn between such conflicting emotions, Bergoglio returned to his Jesuit roots and behaved almost as if he were once more a young man studying for his formation. He swept floors and tended to the sick, washing them and changing their bedsheets; he walked among the people in the streets and presided over many spiritual retreats; and through doing so, he established a humility that, he said, he had never known existed. Years later, in an interview with Father Antonio Spadaro, Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, reflected on the reasoning of those who had wished to punish him, and admitted, “My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative.… To be sure, I have never been like Blessed Imelda [a proverbial goody-goody], but I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.”

  The silence afforded to him during the two years in Córdoba changed Bergoglio fundamentally, and this was reflected in the memories of those who knew him during this time. There is one image that is repeated again and again: of Father Jorge always asking people if they needed anything. He was now nearly fifty-five years old and had finally been freed from the pressures of ecclesiastical politics that had so dominated his life. With a new perspective, he was able to see just how far removed from society the small and insular world of the church had been, and he wrote that “the lack of poverty encourages division [among men and communities].” The humble man, who lives in simplicity and poverty, is far richer in his experiences of the world.

  The sound of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s footsteps in Córdoba echo loudly through his years as bishop and then archbishop; cardinal and then pope. His period of atonement saw him confess his sins to God and, in the process, completely revitalize his view of the world and his commitment to the new role he now intended to play. But moments of atonement and the confession of sins within the Catholic Church are and have always been a silent peace made with God: “the grace of silence.” They are private and will remain so for the rest of a sinner’s life. Therefore, what frustrated and angered those waiting for some acknowledgment or apology who listened to his terse testimony during the 2010 trials—“I did what I could” and “due to our discipline, we preferred to do it via the ecclesiastical hierarchy”—is precisely the concept that the church has followed since its inception: you confess your sins to God and you are forgiven. And although sinners carry that knowledge deep in their hearts—the knowledge of pain caused to others or actions not taken—that is where it remains. There are no public declarations, only the offer of a chance to continue life with the blessing of absolution.

  And that is exactly what Jorge Bergoglio did.

  8

  HABEMUS PAPAM … ITERUM

  The ballot papers were loaded into the stove, along with the Vatican’s new fumo bianco cartridge, to avoid any color confusion, and at 7:06 P.M. unmistakably white smoke billowed from the chimney and into the rainy night sky. The pealing of bells from St. Peter’s mingled with the jubilant cheers of the sodden crowds in the square.

  While emotions were erupting outside, Francis was seated quietly in the Room of Tears. Considering the magnitude of the election, precious little time for reflection is afforded a new pope, as impatient tailors wait nervously outside the door, needles at the ready to adjust the white papal cassock. While members of the Gammarelli family busied themselves around Francis, the master of Pontifical Liturgical Ceremonies entered to assist him in donning the red velvet and white ermine mozzetta so favored by Benedict, along with the gold, jewel-encrusted pectoral cross, papal cuff links, and red leather shoes. But Francis was not Benedict. He was a man who had rejected luxury his whole life: to embrace it now would be sheer hypocrisy. Instead, the Italian media reported him—although the quotes were believed to be false—thanking the assistant who was helping to dress him, before saying, “It’s not carnival time.”

  He returned to the chapel dressed simply in the white cassock, his plain black orthopedic shoes, and his cardinal’s silver pectoral cross. His modest appearance was a surprise, to say the least, and there were more to come. When Francis reentered the Sistine Chapel, he was instructed to officially receive his fellow cardinals from the same ornate throne as Benedict had done eight years earlier. Again, he politely declined the formality: he preferred to stand, and rather than allowing his brothers to kiss his ring and declare their loyalty, he disarmed them once more by kissing their hands. It was a moving gesture. Cardinal Dolan recalled, “He met with us on our own level. It’s very difficult to explain. You obviously get to know your brother cardinal. But all of a sudden the identity is different.”

  With congratulations over, it was time for Francis to reveal himself to the world. But he had one more important gesture to make. On his way to the balcony, he paused at a telephone and requested to be connected to Castel Gandolfo. He wished to speak to Benedict. There was no reply, but Francis insisted they try again. It turned out that the pope emeritus and his staff were all gathered around the television, eager for their first view of the successor. Benedict was finally pried away, and the two men spoke kindly, “exchanging good wishes and assurances of mutual prayer.”

  Over an hour had passed since white smoke had billowed out. St. Peter’s Square was overflowing, and crowds of people hoping to catch a glimpse of their new pope now spilled out down the side roads. There were screams of delight when the red velvet curtains twitched. Out stepped Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran to utter the words everyone had been waiting fo
r: “Habemus papam!” As quickly as they had erupted, the cheers fell away when Tauran announced that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been elected pope.

  “Who is he?” many asked. After some furious googling, which revealed the scant facts that an Argentinian Jesuit had been elected, the crowds happily chanted, “FRANCISCUM! FRANCISCUM! FRANCISCUM!” for ten long minutes.

  Finally, at 8:22 P.M. the curtains were drawn back and the smiling but nervous face of Pope Francis beamed down from the balcony. His wave was tentative and brief. Francis lowered his arms as his smile faded. For well over a minute he stood there, motionless. As if in a trance, he gazed through his small round spectacles at the crowds enveloped in a darkness now punctuated by thousands of twinkling camera flashes. When a microphone was placed in front of him, the new pope awoke from his reverie and said in Italian, “Brothers and sisters, good evening!” Cheers echoed around the square. Breaking the tension with a kind of joke, Francis continued: “You know that it was the duty of the conclave to give Rome a bishop. It seems that my brother cardinals have gone to the ends of the earth to get one … but here we are.… I thank you for your welcome.”

  Conscious that Benedict was watching, the new pope began his speech with a prayer for the old pope: “First of all, I would like to offer a prayer for our bishop emeritus, Benedict XVI. Let us pray together for him, that the Lord may bless him and that Our Lady may keep him.” This was followed by some general words about the journey they were all about to take together. According to Vatican tradition, a newly elected pontiff blesses his people, but Francis, as his brother cardinals had already discovered, was anything but traditional and instead said, “Now I would like to give the blessing, but first—first I ask a favor of you: before the bishop blesses his people, I ask you to pray to the Lord that he will bless me: the prayer of the people asking the blessing for their bishop. Let us make, in silence, this prayer: your prayer over me.”