BUENOS AIRES (AP) — When he was still living in Buenos Aires, one of Jorge Bergoglio’s passions on cloudy days was listening to the tangos of the great Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla.
Today in Rome, Pope Francis continues to enjoy that sentimental music that characterizes the Argentine capital, where he was born 86 years ago.
“We are very nostalgic, very fond of licking our wounds,” he reflected recently when remembering his country, which he left at the end of February 2013 to attend the conclave of cardinals that shortly after elected him successor to Benedict XVI.
He never returned after being anointed on March 13 of that year as the first Latin American leader of the Catholic Church.
His election as pope was celebrated in Argentina with a merriment similar to winning a World Cup. However, a decade later his figure does not generate the same fervor and even divides the waters, confirming the famous expression that “no one is a prophet in his land.”
“It may be that after the explosion and the emotion when he was elected pope, which transcended Catholics, I am not saying indifference (but) there are people who are angry with him. It’s clear,” Argentine journalist Sergio Rubin, an expert on religious issues in frequent contact with the pontiff, told The Associated Press, who has just published, together with his Italian colleague Francesca Ambrogetti, the book “El pastor” on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Jesuit papacy.
The work is the fruit of ten years of interviews in which the pope addresses aspects of his life and pontificate.
Rubin, analysts and relatives consulted by AP agreed that Francisco was plagued by the political polarization that for two decades has divided Argentines between Kirchnerism and its detractors. Could this be the reason why he has not yet set foot in Argentina as pope?
“90% does not come through the crack,” said Rubin, who writes for the Clarín newspaper. “There are reports from the Secretary of State from several years ago that tell him not to come. Because everything he says or does, if he gets close to one or the other, would be more cause for a fight than anything else.”
The populist policies of Kirchnerism – the center-left current of Peronism led by vice president and former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015) – are rejected by sectors that have former conservative president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) among their referents.
The media and social networks are a field of permanent confrontation between the two sides and in turn feed the division.
The pope became involved in this struggle when a photograph showed him with a grim gesture in an audience held in 2016 in the Vatican together with then-president Macri, which the anti-Kirchner sector read as a sign of their discomfort with that conservative administration and their sympathy for the former president Fernández de Kirchner.
Analysts agreed that the image that went viral negatively affected Francisco’s popularity in his native country.
According to Sergio Berenzstein, PhD in Political Science from the University of North Carolina and director of the consulting firm Berensztein, Bergoglio is “a controversial figure, especially in the most conservative sectors of Argentina, more than one side of the rift.”
The political scientist pointed out that these segments “failed to fully understand the change in attitude” of the pontiff when he approached the then president in 2013, in contrast to the cold and at times harsh relationship he had previously maintained with Kirchnerism when he was archbishop. of Buenos Aires and president of the Episcopal Conference.
The Pope’s relationship with relevant political figures in his country -according to Berenzstein- has been changing. “With some he doesn’t talk, with others he keeps talking. He did not receive Cristina anymore (in the Vatican), nor did the president (Alberto Fernández, also a Peronist).
According to the analyst, the issue of abortion was a turning point in his relationship with the Argentine president.
Argentina decriminalized the interruption of pregnancy at the end of 2020 during the government of Fernández, who supported the initiative. The pope received the president five months later in a briefer audience than he had with him earlier the previous year, when parliamentary treatment of free abortion was not on as near a horizon.
“As a good Jesuit that he is, his behavior is complex. There is never a linear explanation. That must be understood in his way of conceiving politics, “emphasized Berenzstein, who noted that, although short circuits may arise with his interlocutors, the pontiff” never breaks completely.
Bergoglio’s speech against exclusion and an “economic system that continues to waste lives in the name of the god of money” has been read by sectors of his country as an ascription to Peronism, the movement founded by three-time president Juan Domingo Perón and that has social justice as one of its banners.
A few days ago, Miguel Ángel Pichetto, from the opposition coalition Together for Change, questioned the pope’s social discourse and pointed out that “his visions in Argentina have been totally negative for the country.”
“The pope was always against neoliberalism and in favor of poverty, of the schemes that mean that merit is not important, that private property is a secondary right; all ideas that are crazy for Argentina”, said the General Auditor of the Nation.
Right-wing Javier Milei, one of the favorites in October’s presidential elections, criticized Francis a month ago for arguing that citizens should pay taxes to protect the dignity of the poor.
“Your model is poverty,” Milei snapped at the pontiff on Twitter. “Always standing on the side of evil. If someone has a charity attack, he goes out with a gun to steal to finance it, do you bless him?
In the interview for Rubin’s book, the pontiff clarified that “I was never affiliated with the Peronist party, I was not even a militant or sympathizer of Peronism.” However, he indicated, “in the hypothesis of having a Peronist conception of politics, what would be wrong?”
The second national survey on Religious Beliefs and Attitudes in Argentina in 2019 -considered the only religious census- showed the divisions over the figure of the pope and also a certain indifference that it generates in a mostly Catholic country where religiosity is experienced personally.
40.6% of those surveyed stated that the pontiff is indifferent to them. 27.4% said that they are a world leader who denounces situations of injustice on the planet and 27% that they are too involved in politics instead of taking care of the spiritual part, according to the study by the Council’s Society, Culture and Religion Program National Scientific and Technical Research and the Center for Labor Studies and Research, which will be repeated in ten years.
“The crack is reflected in the survey. He places the poles furthest to the left or right with respect to the Pope… And at the same time, that there are many people (to whom) he is indifferent; that is to say, that the way to relate to faith and religion for many Catholics involves personal autonomy”, explained the coordinator of the survey, Verónica Giménez Béliveau.
The study included 2,421 cases and had a margin of error of two percentage points.
According to Roberto Bacman, director of the Center for Public Opinion Studies, Bergoglio’s image has fallen since he was appointed ten years ago. “In the first years he had an 85% positive image and two years ago he gave around 72%.” This decline was partly influenced by the criticism received from “the entire communication apparatus of Macri’s management.”
“I was disappointed,” said María de los Ángeles López, a practicing Catholic who believed the pope’s appointment would have a more positive impact for Argentina. “There is more poverty, more insecurity and the crack is worse than ever. I thought he could help reconcile us as a society, but instead he deepened it.”
The 63-year-old woman, who teaches yoga, said that Francisco “is a Kirchnerist” and questioned whether he has received Fernández de Kirchner twice in the Vatican despite accusations of corruption.
Those close to Bergoglio assured that he is not coming to Argentina because he has other priorities and that despite the physical distance he is aware of what is happening in his country, especially the suffering of the popular sectors.
“You have to understand that the pope’s mission goes beyond the ego of the Argentine,” said his nephew José Bergoglio. “He is a man who is not afraid of anything, not the crack, not anything. He does not come because he needs to go to other places, he needs to accompany other countries, other people who are suffering.
The journalist Alicia Barrios, a friend of Francisco, noted that “you have to be in Rome, see how he moves, he is very worried about the war (in Europe); you imagine that much time for Argentina does not have. He lived here for 76 years…everything he gave to Argentina is here. And there are countries that need it more”.
The Pope maintains in the book “El pastor” that “the purpose of traveling to Argentina is still valid. It’s unfair to say I don’t want to go.”
“Let us bear in mind that I had to visit many countries, even some where a pope has never been… I am always in contact with many compatriot friends. And when I write about values, about the social doctrine of the Church, even though I do it for all countries, I keep my country in mind and I hope that my words can be a contribution”, Francisco asserted.
Despite his global concerns, Bergoglio has fluid contact without intermediaries with priests from poor neighborhoods in Argentina who have been warning about the scourge of drugs for some time, especially among young people in a context of growing poverty.
In a recent interview with AP, the pope did not hide his bitterness at the “impressive” annual inflation of almost 95% in 2022 and the impoverishment of Argentines. “I don’t do politics, I read the data. They have an impressive level of inflation, ”he said.
The Pope attributed the rise in poverty – which economists estimate affects more than 40% of the population – and the constant rise in the cost of living to “bad administration, bad policies.”
Father José “Pepe” Di Paola, head of the Hogares de Cristo project for the recovery of people suffering from addictions and one of his interlocutors, pointed out that Francisco “is not far away, he is totally close.”
“In popular neighborhoods it is different, there is a very good image of him, there is a recognized and beloved image,” said the priest, who led a colorful pilgrimage this Saturday to the Basilica of the Virgin of Luján, patron saint of Argentina, for the ten years of Francis’ pontificate.
This anniversary would have to “be celebrated with Argentine flags, not political ones, like the World Cup celebration,” according to Di Paola. “We went out to celebrate, we hugged anyone without caring what religion they were, what political party they were, or what they thought. Here it has to be the same: a celebration with the same spirit”.
