https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/15/vati-a15.html
A cable dated November 7, 1975 reveals that Laghi “talked with Admiral Massera early November 5 on same subject [President Perón], and recently with many other participants. Nuncio [Laghi]’s analysis was that Mrs. Perón must leave as soon as possible by leave of absence, resignation, or golpe ”—that is, a coup.
Besides being a close friend of Massera, Laghi was well respected in military and diplomatic circles. As the same cable confirms, “Nuncio is well connected and is astute observer. His overall conclusion was that she is finished. Only form of departure remains in question. However, he commented, it could take longer than expected and be an agonizing process.”
Ultimately, the real agony was experienced by tens of thousands of workers, students and political activists, labeled “terrorists,” who actually fought in opposition to the state terrorism which characterized the Videla regime, but were either killed or tortured, jailed and disappeared.
Pio Laghi was more than a known entity for the US government. In a cabledated May 14, 1974, Laghi is depicted as “highly educated, personable, speaks excellent English, and is well disposed toward the United States.”
These revelations shed light on the recent installation of the new Pope Francis, the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The new Pontiff is deeply implicated in the “Dirty War” waged by the Argentine military junta (see “The ‘Dirty War’ Pope”).
.................
the Church's grizzly lists .......
http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/iglesia/vatican.html
Role of Vatican in Argentina's Dirty War
By Uki Goñi, 1995
The Vatican Embassy in Argentina kept a secret list of thousands of people who disappeared during Argentina's Dirty War of the late 1970s which it failed to make public at the time and which may have since been destroyed, according to recent revelations regarding the Catholic Church's poor human rights record in this country. Italian Cardinal Pio Laghi, who was Papal Pro-Nuncio in Buenos Aires during the time of the military dictatorship - and who later served as John Paul II's Pro-Nuncio in the United States - has openly admitted to the Argentine press that he had knowledge of some 6,000 cases of people who "disappeared."
After leaving Argentina, Pio Laghi became the Pope's representative in Washington D.C. for the ten years leading up to 1990. Until 1984 he was the Vatican's Apostolic Delegate in Washington. After former President Ronald Reagan established diplomatic relations with Rome that same year Pio Laghi stayed on in the U.S. as the first Apostolic Pro-Nuncio. He is now a Cardinal in Rome.
Pio Laghi's admission - in an interview published by Gente magazine in Argentina - came only after press reports in early 1995 that his own office and the Catholic Church in Argentina kept secret lists of part of the 30,000 people who are believed to have died at the hands of the dictatorship of General Jorge Rafael Videla.
Details of the Church's grizzly lists were provided by one of its own members, Father Federico "Fred" Richards, a Catholic priest of Irish descent at the Church of the Holy Cross in Buenos Aires, in an interview on 13 April 1995.
"I know of two lists kept by the Church. One was at the office of Pro-Nuncio Pio Laghi and the second at the office of the Military Vicariate. What happened to these lists? Did they burn them? Did they throw them away? Why does the Church hierarchy not bring forth the lists these dignitaries had?" asked Father Richards, who despite being a third-generation Argentine and 73 years of age still speaks fluent English with a thick Irish brogue.
Although Pio Laghi claimed that his silence enabled him to save some few lives, this help was limited only to the cases of individuals from influential families who had access to him. But some of those same influential few condemn Pio Laghi for withholding information which could have prevented the "disappearance" of thousands of other victims.........................
Role of Vatican in Argentina's Dirty War - Proyecto ...
www.desaparecidos.org/arg/iglesia/vatican.html
After leaving Argentina, Pio Laghi became the Pope's representative in ... Details of the Church's grizzly lists were provided by one of its own members, Father ... the General of the Order during the years of the Argentine military dictatorship.The Power and The Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of John ...
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1472105168
David Yallop - 2012 - Fiction
Inside the Dark Heart of John Paul II's Vatican David Yallop ... When Archbishop Laghi was postedto Argentina in the 1970sthe military terror was at itsheight. ... In 1976 during the early months ofthe military dictatorship he gave a speech to the ... Simultaneously the papal nuncio in the United States, Archbishop Pio Laghi, ...Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the ...
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0252068122Jason Berry - 1992 - Religion85-86 — On Pio Laghi's hackground: Penny Lernoux, "Blood taints church inArgentina ... regime, he gave a speech to the army in which he cited the church's just-war ... Of course it was not the nuncio's job to supplant the Argentine bishops in ...
Pope Francis and Argentina's Dirty War: Nine Questions He ...
readersupportednews.org/.../16604-pope-francis-and-argentinas-dirty-wa...
Mar 22, 2013 - 'Like Old Testament prophets, dogged journalists from Argentina and around ... of the military junta, credits Papal Nuncio Pío Laghi, Archbishop Raul Francisco ... But, in line with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, he worked to ...
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/15/vati-a15.html
WikiLeaks cables confirm collusion between Vatican and dictators
A few years later, on March 24, 1976, Argentine Commander Jorge Rafael Videla headed the coup that overthrew President Isabel Perón, wife of former President Juan Perón. Videla ran a brutal police state, adopting free-market economic policies similar to Pinochet’s. His regime, infamously associated with the “Dirty War” and “Operation Condor,” became synonymous with disappearances, murder and torture.
Videla’s close accomplice in the coup and the military dictatorship that followed was Navy Admiral Emilio Massera. New cables show the close ties between Massera and Pio Laghi, Apostolic nuncio (Holy See diplomat) in Argentina.
A cable dated November 7, 1975 reveals that Laghi “talked with Admiral Massera early November 5 on same subject [President Perón], and recently with many other participants. Nuncio [Laghi]’s analysis was that Mrs. Perón must leave as soon as possible by leave of absence, resignation, or golpe ”—that is, a coup.
Besides being a close friend of Massera, Laghi was well respected in military and diplomatic circles. As the same cable confirms, “Nuncio is well connected and is astute observer. His overall conclusion was that she is finished. Only form of departure remains in question. However, he commented, it could take longer than expected and be an agonizing process.”
Ultimately, the real agony was experienced by tens of thousands of workers, students and political activists, labeled “terrorists,” who actually fought in opposition to the state terrorism which characterized the Videla regime, but were either killed or tortured, jailed and disappeared.
Pio Laghi was more than a known entity for the US government. In a cabledated May 14, 1974, Laghi is depicted as “highly educated, personable, speaks excellent English, and is well disposed toward the United States.”
These revelations shed light on the recent installation of the new Pope Francis, the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The new Pontiff is deeply implicated in the “Dirty War” waged by the Argentine military junta (see “The ‘Dirty War’ Pope”).
...................
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/15/vati-a15.html
WikiLeaks cables confirm collusion between Vatican and dictators
By Marc Wells
15 April 2013
Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks released a new archive of 1.3 million diplomatic cables and intelligence records last Monday encompassing the years 1973 through 1976, dubbed “The Kissinger Cables.”
The database includes documents revealing the ruthless operations led by the US worldwide, at a time when the international working class was on the offensive and the bourgeoisie was waging a ruthless counterattack.
Among the cables, a series of diplomatic communications exposes the relationships between the Vatican and a number of dictatorial regimes, from Chile’s Augusto Pinochet to Argentina’s Jorge Rafael Videla to Spain’s Francisco Franco.
On September 11, 1973, a CIA-backed coup led by general Pinochet overthrew the elected government of Socialist Party President Salvador Allende. In Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship, thousands of left-wing activists, students, trade unionists and anyone suspected of opposing Chilean and international capital were killed or disappeared by the regime. Hundreds of thousands were jailed and tortured, or sent into exile.
The names of these criminal state operations, such as “Operation Condor” or “The Caravan of Death” are forever embedded in the consciousness of Chilean workers. Pinochet’s “struggle against Marxism” remains one of the most violent developments in the history of the 20th century.
The main goal of such struggle was to destroy the working class and its organizations, both physically and through the imposition of aggressive economic policies of privatization and deregulation. These created a model of enrichment by a small oligarchy for the following decades.
Many governments joined this “struggle,” with the US leading the pack. President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger allocated $8 million for the campaign to destabilize Allende. While maintaining an appearance of liberal reforms and a more relaxed policy toward the USSR initiated by John XXIII, the Vatican, led by Pope Paul VI, lent support to the Chilean dictator.
In a cable dated October 18, 1973, Archbishop Giovanni Benelli, Vatican Deputy Secretary of State, denied the crimes committed by Pinochet’s junta, expressing “his and Pope’s grave concern over successful international leftist campaign to misconstrue completely realities of Chilean situation.”
More precisely, the cable documents Benelli’s view on the “exaggerated coverage of events as possibly greatest success of communist propaganda, and highlighted fact that even moderate and conservative circles seem quite disposed to believe grossest lies about Chilean junta’s excesses.”
His source of information was Cardinal Raúl Silva, a staunch opponent of communism. According to the cable, “Cardinal Silva and Chilean Episcopate in general have assured Pope Paul that junta making every effort to return to normal and that stories alleging brutal reprisals in international media secret are unfounded.”
The role played by figures like Silva or Paul VI himself—promoted as “progressives” at the time—emerges quite clearly in these documents. Benelli states that “validity and sincerity of Cardinal Silva cannot be challenged since Silva is known internationally as one of Church’s leading progressives who, moreover, gave tacit support to President Allende.”
This evidence shows not only the denial of Pinochet’s crimes by the Vatican and the Chilean Church: it reveals the bankruptcy of the Allende government, which based itself on relations with layers of the Church that were completely hostile to it.
In fact, the Archbishop states that, “leftist forces have greatly cut losses by convincing world that Allende’s fall due exclusively to fascist and external forces rather than to shortcomings of Allende’s own policies as is rightly case.”
If there is any objective truth in Benelli’s statement, it is the fact that Pinochet, who was appointed by Allende as head of the armed forces, took advantage of the political environment created by Allende’s retreat from the reforms he had promised. Allende was himself a capitalist politician, promoting a “Chilean road to socialism” but fundamentally committed to demobilizing the working class. This prepared the field for a right-wing military takeover.
In November 1973, in the immediate aftermath of Pinochet’s coup, anothercable documents negotiations for the renewal and revision of the Concordat, originally signed in 1953, between the Vatican and the fascist regime of Francisco Franco in Spain, which effectively rejected the principle of separation between state and Church.
Archbishop Agostino Casaroli—the Vatican’s Secretary of Public Affairs at the time and another “ Ostpolitik reformist” figure who developed new relations with Eastern European countries in an attempt to boost the Church’s influence in Stalinist-ruled countries—met with Spanish officials. It was agreed that a low profile be maintained.
There were several reasons for this: first, events in Chile had created immense opposition among workers and students, and the Church risked being publicly exposed as an ally of dictatorial regimes. Secondly, there were disagreements inside the Vatican itself on how to best manage the Vatican’s image and distance it from fascist dictators.
A cable dated November 7, 1973 states that a “difference of views between the Vatican and the Spanish Episcopate is on the fundamental question of whether there should be a new Concordat negotiated.” The record shows that the Episcopate was “amenable to partial accords or revisions of the 1953 one, since they believe a new Concordat might once again associate the Church with the regime” while they are “trying to disassociate the Church from the GoS [Government of Spain] in the eyes of the Spanish public.”
While layers of the ecclesiastic hierarchy were concerned that after Franco’s death negotiating terms would be less favorable and were pushing for a new deal, the “liberal,” “progressive” section of the Vatican sought to “maintain its liberal image if only partial accords on the most vital points of friction” were renegotiated.
Contrary to Casaroli’s request to keep the visit under the radar, Franco’s regime “promoted extensive press and television coverage of the visit,” provoking a reaction from the Vatican. According to the Italian publicationl’Espresso, Casaroli protested to a Spanish minister for “the offensive violation of the reassurances received from the Spanish government to maintain a low profile.”
A few years later, on March 24, 1976, Argentine Commander Jorge Rafael Videla headed the coup that overthrew President Isabel Perón, wife of former President Juan Perón. Videla ran a brutal police state, adopting free-market economic policies similar to Pinochet’s. His regime, infamously associated with the “Dirty War” and “Operation Condor,” became synonymous with disappearances, murder and torture.
Videla’s close accomplice in the coup and the military dictatorship that followed was Navy Admiral Emilio Massera. New cables show the close ties between Massera and Pio Laghi, Apostolic nuncio (Holy See diplomat) in Argentina.
A cable dated November 7, 1975 reveals that Laghi “talked with Admiral Massera early November 5 on same subject [President Perón], and recently with many other participants. Nuncio [Laghi]’s analysis was that Mrs. Perón must leave as soon as possible by leave of absence, resignation, or golpe ”—that is, a coup.
Besides being a close friend of Massera, Laghi was well respected in military and diplomatic circles. As the same cable confirms, “Nuncio is well connected and is astute observer. His overall conclusion was that she is finished. Only form of departure remains in question. However, he commented, it could take longer than expected and be an agonizing process.”
Ultimately, the real agony was experienced by tens of thousands of workers, students and political activists, labeled “terrorists,” who actually fought in opposition to the state terrorism which characterized the Videla regime, but were either killed or tortured, jailed and disappeared.
Pio Laghi was more than a known entity for the US government. In a cabledated May 14, 1974, Laghi is depicted as “highly educated, personable, speaks excellent English, and is well disposed toward the United States.”
These revelations shed light on the recent installation of the new Pope Francis, the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The new Pontiff is deeply implicated in the “Dirty War” waged by the Argentine military junta (see “The ‘Dirty War’ Pope”).
.................................
Role of Vatican in Argentina's Dirty War
By Uki Goñi, 1995
The Vatican Embassy in Argentina kept a secret list of thousands of people who disappeared during Argentina's Dirty War of the late 1970s which it failed to make public at the time and which may have since been destroyed, according to recent revelations regarding the Catholic Church's poor human rights record in this country. Italian Cardinal Pio Laghi, who was Papal Pro-Nuncio in Buenos Aires during the time of the military dictatorship - and who later served as John Paul II's Pro-Nuncio in the United States - has openly admitted to the Argentine press that he had knowledge of some 6,000 cases of people who "disappeared."
After leaving Argentina, Pio Laghi became the Pope's representative in Washington D.C. for the ten years leading up to 1990. Until 1984 he was the Vatican's Apostolic Delegate in Washington. After former President Ronald Reagan established diplomatic relations with Rome that same year Pio Laghi stayed on in the U.S. as the first Apostolic Pro-Nuncio. He is now a Cardinal in Rome.
Pio Laghi's admission - in an interview published by Gente magazine in Argentina - came only after press reports in early 1995 that his own office and the Catholic Church in Argentina kept secret lists of part of the 30,000 people who are believed to have died at the hands of the dictatorship of General Jorge Rafael Videla.
Details of the Church's grizzly lists were provided by one of its own members, Father Federico "Fred" Richards, a Catholic priest of Irish descent at the Church of the Holy Cross in Buenos Aires, in an interview on 13 April 1995.
"I know of two lists kept by the Church. One was at the office of Pro-Nuncio Pio Laghi and the second at the office of the Military Vicariate. What happened to these lists? Did they burn them? Did they throw them away? Why does the Church hierarchy not bring forth the lists these dignitaries had?" asked Father Richards, who despite being a third-generation Argentine and 73 years of age still speaks fluent English with a thick Irish brogue.
Although Pio Laghi claimed that his silence enabled him to save some few lives, this help was limited only to the cases of individuals from influential families who had access to him. But some of those same influential few condemn Pio Laghi for withholding information which could have prevented the "disappearance" of thousands of other victims.
Father Richards said that Pio Laghi and Argentina's bishops received their information directly from the military repressors themselves.
During the 1970s Father Richards was editor of The Southern Cross, the newspaper of the Irish community in Argentina, a brave weekly written in English which published reports of the "disappearances" as they happened while the local Spanish-language press maintained a deadly silence. The 120-year-old newspaper is still published today for the community of Irish descendants in Argentina.
Father Richards clearly recalled the two occasions when he consulted the "lists" of the Pope's Ambassador and of the Argentine Catholic Church: "A niece of mine, Gloria Keogh, was kidnapped on the night of June 15, 1978, from her apartment in the neighborhood of Belgrano in Buenos Aires, and she 'disappeared.' She was 21 years old and a writer who a few days before had published her first book of short stories. I went with her father, who was my first cousin, to seek the help of the Vatican Embassy."
Father Richards said he discovered a macabre system in place at the Vatican Embassy through which Argentina's military rulers constantly updated information regarding the dead and missing: "The Nuncio's secretary was an Irish priest, Kevin Mullen. He told us that the Vatican Embassy used to periodically, every ten or fifteen days, send a list up to the Ministry of the Interior of people it knew had disappeared, requesting news or information." Mullen told Father Richards that according to the wording of the reply Pio Laghi's office knew who was dead and who alive.
Other relatives of missing people have stated that Pio Laghi kept precise information on the fate of the "disappeared" but Father Richards was the first clergyman to go on record confirming the existence of these lists.
The failure of the Catholic Church to take decisive action to end the thousands of disappearances in the 1970s remains a thorny issue in a nation tormented by its failure to come to terms with a nightmarish past.
Father Richards said he discovered a second secret list of 2,100 missing people kept by Argentine Bishop Adolfo Tortolo, Argentina's Vicar of the Armed Forces: "From the Pro-Nuncio's office we went to the office of the Military Vicariate. At the time the Vicar-General was Bishop Tortolo, who always had an excuse for everything the military did. He was behind them with that strange maneuvering or politics that the majority of the bishops had. We passed into the office of his secretary, Monsignor Grasselli, who pointed to the stack of letters he was receiving from all over the country from people asking for help and information about their missing relatives."
Monsignor Grasselli kept a list for the Army Vicariate, Father Richard recalled. "It was a file of some 2,100 missing people. Beside the names on some of these files there was a cross, meaning that that person had been confirmed dead. Grasselli told me the case of a young boy who was serving the military draft and who planned to marry when he finished. But he disappeared while still a soldier in the Army. His sweetheart came desperately seeking information from the Military Vicar. Grasselli took all the data he could and after about ten days he called her with good news. The boy had been located and was being held in the city of La Plata. But five days afterwards he received another call from La Plata, and Grasselli had to call the girl and tell her that her future husband was confirmed dead." The priest noted that neither the Vatican Embassy nor the Military Vicariate could inform him of the fate of his niece, who still remains missing.
Father Richards belongs to the Passionist Order, founded in 1720. Its members are pledged to keep alive the memory of Christ's suffering on the cross. The first Passionists arrived in Argentina from Ireland 115 years ago, and there currently are about 30 priests from the Order locally. A large sign inside the Church of the Holy Cross in Buenos Aires pledges "solidarity with the crucified of today."
A U.S. prelate, Monsignor Theodore Folley, was the General of the Order during the years of the Argentine military dictatorship. Monsignor Folley, on a visit to Buenos Aires at that time, received a letter from Argentina's Cardinal-Primate Antonio Caggiano who was enraged by an editorial Father Richards had written titled The Silence of the Bishops in The Southern Cross. It condemned the hierarchy of the Argentine Catholic Church for not speaking out against the excesses of the military government. Folley ignored the pressure from the Cardinal and praised Father Richards for his brave work.
More recently, he received personal congratulations for his courage from Irish President Mary Robinson, who met Father Richards during an official visit she made to Buenos Aires in March this year.
Due to action on the human rights front, the two Irish parishes of Saint Patrick's and of the Holy Cross in Buenos Aires were faced with constant threats from the military. Since both churches represent Irish orders and are run by Irish and Irish-Argentine priests, Argentina's hard-line bishops were unable to silence them.
In 1976, three Pallatine priests and two seminarians were shot to death by military security forces at Saint Patrick's. The following year, two founding members of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (the group representing the thousands of mothers of the "disappeared") and a French nun who worked alongside them were kidnapped at the Church of the Holy Cross, along with four other people, a kidnapping which was witnessed by Father Richards. Both these crimes remain unpunished by Argentina's courts to this day.
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