Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here.

COMMENT: With the selec­tion of the first Pope from the Amer­i­c­as (Fran­cis, for­mer­ly Car­di­nal Bergoglio), media out­lets have indulged in the pre­dictable hagiogra­phies con­cern­ing his back­ground.

Although he is from Argenti­na, his selec­tion should not be viewed as a break from the past, but rather a con­tin­u­a­tion of the grim, pro-fas­cist pol­i­tics of the Vat­i­can.

The scan­dal-rid­den Vat­i­can Bank (The IOR) was a prin­ci­pal vehi­cle for the laun­der­ing of Nazi mon­ey, as we saw in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #532. Much of that finan­cial dias­po­ra involved the mov­ing of monies to Argenti­na.

The Argentine/Vatican con­nec­tion also fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the unsa­vory sto­ry of the rat­lines, the Vat­i­can net­works which enabled Nazi war crim­i­nals to escape to Argenti­na (among oth­er places). (For back­ground on the rat­lines, exam­ine AFA #‘s 17, 19 among oth­er pro­grams.)

To flesh out under­stand­ing of the sig­nif­i­cance of the Argentine/Nazi con­nec­tion, we rec­om­mend a num­ber of books avail­able for down­load on this web­site, includ­ing Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile, The Nazis Go Under­ground and Falange: The Secret Axis Army in the Amer­i­c­as.

A key ele­ment of com­mon­al­i­ty between the fas­cist pol­i­tics of the Vat­i­can and those of Argenti­na con­cerns the P‑2 Lodge, a cryp­to-fas­cist gov­ern­ment that vir­tu­al­ly ran Italy for years and was inex­tri­ca­bly-linked with the Vat­i­can Bank for much of that time.

In addi­tion to its Ital­ian branch, the P‑2 Lodge also had an impor­tant chap­ter in Argenti­na, with jun­ta mem­bers Emilio Massera, Car­los Suarez Mason and Jorge Videla being mem­bers. It was this jun­ta that pros­e­cut­ed the Dirty War in the 1970’s and ’80’s, with which Car­di­nal Bergoglio was com­plic­it. (For more about the P‑2, includ­ing its Argen­tine branch, see AFA #‘s 18, 19.)

Bergoglio col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Argen­tine P‑2 per­pe­tra­tors of the Dirty War.

There is a long, fas­ci­nat­ing, online excerpt from Hora­cioVer­b­itzky’s book in which he details the evo­lu­tion of the Catholic fas­cist doc­trine that man­i­fest­ed in the hor­rors of the Naval Mechan­ics School.

That evo­lu­tion was part and par­cel to what Hen­rik Kruger described as the Inter­na­tion­al Fascista in THE GREAT HEROIN COUP. It is described at length in AFA #19.

Ver­b­itzky makes seri­ous charges against Bergoglio, accus­ing him of com­plic­i­ty in the dirty war.

Ver­b­itzky relates that one of the priests arrest­ed and tor­tured with the com­plic­i­ty of Bergoglio is of the opin­ion that Bergoglio may very well have assist­ed in his “inter­ro­ga­tion”!

It would be fool­ish to expect mean­ing­ful reform from one with his back­ground.

“Fran­cis Is First Pope from the Amer­i­c­as” by Bri­an Mur­phy and Michael War­ren [AP]; Yahoo News; 3/13/2013.

EXCERPT: . . . . Bergoglio also was accused of turn­ing his back on a fam­i­ly that lost five rel­a­tives to state ter­ror, includ­ing a young woman who was 5‑months’ preg­nant before she was kid­napped and killed in 1977. The De la Cuadra fam­i­ly appealed to the leader of the Jesuits in Rome, who urged Bergoglio to help them; Bergoglio then assigned a mon­sign­or to the case. Months passed before the mon­sign­or came back with a writ­ten note from a colonel: It revealed that the woman had giv­en birth in cap­tiv­i­ty to a girl who was giv­en to a fam­i­ly “too impor­tant” for the adop­tion to be reversed.

Despite this writ­ten evi­dence in a case he was per­son­al­ly involved with, Bergoglio tes­ti­fied in 2010 that he did­n’t know about any stolen babies until well after the dic­ta­tor­ship was over.

“Bergoglio has a very cow­ard­ly atti­tude when it comes to some­thing so ter­ri­ble as the theft of babies. He says he did­n’t know any­thing about it until 1985,” said the baby’s aunt, Estela de la Cuadra, whose moth­er Ali­cia co-found­ed the Grand­moth­ers of the Plaza de Mayo in 1977 in hopes of iden­ti­fy­ing these babies. “He does­n’t face this real­i­ty and it does­n’t both­er him. The ques­tion is how to save his name, save him­self. But he can’t keep these alle­ga­tions from reach­ing the pub­lic. The peo­ple know how he is.” . . .

“Pope Fran­cis’ Jun­ta Past: Argen­tine Jour­nal­ist on New Pontiff’s Ties to Abduc­tion of Jesuit Priests”; Democ­ra­cy Now; 3/14/2013.

EXCERPT:. . . .HORACIO VERBITSKY: Of course. He was accused by two Jesuit priests of hav­ing sur­ren­dered them to the mil­i­tary. They were a group of Jesuits that were under Bergoglio’s direc­tion. He was the provin­cial supe­ri­or of the order in Argenti­na, being very, very young. He was the younger provin­cial Jesuit in his­to­ry; at 36 years, he was provin­cial. Dur­ing a peri­od of great polit­i­cal activ­i­ty in the Jesuits’ com­pa­ny, he stim­u­lat­ed the social work of the Jesuits. But when the mil­i­tary coup over­throw the Isabel Perón gov­ern­ment, he was in touch with the mil­i­tary that oust­ed this gov­ern­ment and asked the Jesuits to stop their social work. And when they refused to do it, he stopped pro­tect­ing them, and he let the mil­i­tary know that they were not more inside the pro­tec­tion of the Jesuits’ com­pa­ny, and they were kid­napped. And they accuse him for this deed. He denies this. . . .

. . . . But dur­ing the research for one of my books, I found doc­u­ments in the archive of the for­eign rela­tions min­is­ter in Argenti­na, which, from my under­stand­ing, gave an end to the debate and show the dou­ble stan­dard that Bergoglio used. The first doc­u­ment is a note in which Bergoglio asked the min­istry to—the renew­al of the pass­port of one of these two Jesuits that, after his releas­ing, was liv­ing in Ger­many, ask­ing that the pass­port was renewed with­out neces­si­ty of this priest com­ing back to Argenti­na. The sec­ond doc­u­ment is a note from the offi­cer that received the peti­tion rec­om­mend­ing to his supe­ri­or, the min­is­ter, the refusal of the renew­al of the pass­port. And the third doc­u­ment is a note from the same offi­cer telling that these priests have links with subversion—that was the name that the mil­i­tary gave to all the peo­ple involved in oppo­si­tion to the gov­ern­ment, polit­i­cal or armed oppo­si­tion to the military—and that he was jailed in the mechan­ics school of the navy, and say­ing that this infor­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed to the offi­cer by Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio, provin­cial supe­ri­or of the Jesuit com­pa­ny. This means, to my under­stand­ing, a dou­ble stan­dard. He asked the pass­port giv­en to the priest in a for­mal note with his sig­na­ture, but under the table he said the oppo­site and repeat­ed the accu­sa­tions that pro­duced the kid­nap­ping of these priests.

AMY GOODMAN: And these priests—can you explain, Hora­cio, what hap­pened to these two priests, Orlan­do Yorio and Fran­cis­co Jal­ics?

HORACIO VERBITSKY: Yes. Orlan­do, after his releas­ing, went to Rome.

AMY GOODMAN: How were they found?

HORACIO VERBITSKY: Sor­ry?

AMY GOODMAN: How were they found? In what con­di­tion were they? What had hap­pened to them?

HORACIO VERBITSKY: Well, he was released—both of them were released, drugged, con­fused, trans­port­ed by heli­copter to—in the out­skirts of Buenos Aires, were aban­doned, asleep by drugs, in very bad con­di­tion. They were tor­tured. They were inter­ro­gat­ed. One of the inter­roga­tors had exter­nal­ly know­ings about the­o­log­i­cal ques­tions, that induced one of them, Orlan­do Yorio, to think that their own provin­cial, Bergoglio, had been involved in this inter­roga­to­ry.

AMY GOODMAN: He said that—he said that Bergoglio him­self had been part of the—his own inter­ro­ga­tion, this Jesuit priest?

HORACIO VERBITSKY: He told me that he had the impres­sion their own provin­cial, Bergoglio, was present dur­ing the inter­roga­to­ry, which one of the inter­roga­tors had exter­nal­ly knowl­edge of the­o­log­i­cal ques­tions. . . .