: New pope elected is Pope Francis, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina.

Sal

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Personally, I don't think the gods would be angry if women were treated as equals in their temples.
personally I don't think god has any feelings about it one way or another... and in reality, I don't either... I no longer follow the tenets of the Catholic church but I can still see much good in it, still am interested in how it functions, still support it's right to be... still hear the complaints of my friends who are involved and sympathize with them..

There is much good there and many positive things happen within its community so I will still defend and criticize. It works for millions of people and unless one has been raised within its walls it is very difficult to understand the nuances involved. I get that too.
 

Goober

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Jan 23, 2009
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The dirty war? Well, damngrumpy, the scrubbers are out.

This was known after his appointment as Pope.
It was in the news- TV and papers and should be no surprise.
There are as always differing statements of what he did or did not do.
Pope Francis was not involved in ‘dirty war’ torture: Vatican | Holy Post | National Post
The Vatican lashed out at what it called a “defamatory” and “anti-clerical left-wing” campaign to discredit Pope Francis over his actions during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military junta, saying no credible accusation had ever stuck against the new pope.

While the former Jorge Mario Bergoglio, like most other Argentines, failed to openly confront the murderous dictatorship, human rights activists differ on how much responsibility he personally deserves.

The Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi noted Friday that a Jesuit who was kidnapped during the dictatorship in a case that involved Bergoglio had issued a statement earlier in the day saying the two had reconciled.

Lombardi also noted that Argentine courts had never accused Bergoglio of any crime and that on the contrary, there is ample evidence of the role he played protecting people from the military as it kidnapped and killed thousands of people in a “dirty war” to eliminate leftist opponents.

The most damning accusation against Bergoglio is that as the military junta took over in 1976, he withdrew his support for two slum priests whose activist colleagues in the liberation theology movement were disappearing. The priests were then kidnapped and tortured at the Navy Mechanics School, which the junta used as a clandestine prison.

Bergoglio said he had told the priests – Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics – to give up their slum work for their own safety, and they refused. Yorio later accused Bergoglio of effectively delivering them to the death squads by declining to publicly endorse their work. Yorio is now dead.

“I am reconciled to the events and consider the matter to be closed,” he said.

Bergoglio in 2010 revealed his side of the story, reluctantly, to his official biographer Sergio Rubin: that he had gone to extraordinary, behind-the-scenes lengths to save the men.

The Jesuit leader persuaded the family priest of feared dictator Jorge Videla to call in sick so that he could say Mass instead. Once inside the junta leader’s home, Bergoglio privately appealed for mercy, Rubin wrote.
 

darkbeaver

the universe is electric
Jan 26, 2006
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Do you know what the Eucharist is? Women can do Mass except for the Eucharist because a female can't or it would be a lesbian rite.

The term Mother Church has many meanings within Christianity. The principal definition in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is "The Church, esp. the Roman Catholic Church, considered as a mother in its functions of nourishing and protecting the believer".

The spirit is male the matter is female. The church is built of matter. mater/mother.

Death squads! I can't believe it! Holy material church! That's just anti-catholic racist bigotry. They would never do bad stuff.
 

coldstream

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Oct 19, 2005
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He is reputed to have saved lives in the Dirty War by appealing directly to Videla for commutation.. effectively in some cases.

But it's a little like Pius XII's harbouring of Jews and enemies of the Nazis in WW2.. 800,000 of them in various Catholic refuges.. but received widespread criticism after the War for not confronting them directly and vocally (not by respected Jewish leaders.. who expressed gratitude for his role).. something Pius XI was about to do immediately proximate to his somewhat mysterious death in 1939. It's likely that it would not have saved lives.. in WW2.. or the Dirty Wars.

Despots and tyrants do not respond to appeals to conscience.. only to those of vanity or fear. And the Holy See is not equipped to pander to the first.. or to present any material threat for the latter (in this life anyway).

Jorge Videla.. btw is now in prison.. serving a 50 year sentence for murder and human rights abuses (he's 87).. after a Presidential pardon by Carlos Menem was overturned. He accepted full responsibility for the murders.. to preclude charges against his henchmen. He is unrepentant.. and has stated that his enemies won the war and are in power now.
 
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Spade

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Nov 18, 2008
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Meanwhile, in Argentina...
"Now discord may give way to celebration on the streets of Buenos Aires. At least 70 percent the Argentine population is nominally Roman Catholic, though polls indicate that the vast majority of them do not attend church on a regular basis."
- International Business Times
 

Spade

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As usual, you are right.
From the LA Times, quote:
"Meanwhile, Nicolas Maduro, the interim president of Venezuela, credited Chavez for Bergoglio's election.
'Chavez had some influence in this naming a South American pope,' Maduro said in an interview over state television in Caracas, the capital. 'A new hand arrived [in heaven], and Christ told him, South America's moment has arrived.'"
 

Goober

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Thanks, Goober, for quoting the National Scrubber.

Canadian Content Forums -
Suspicions and allegations like those of Bregman and Verbitsky are by no means universally held. They are roundly denied, for example, by Argentina’s 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, himself a victim of the dictatorship, tortured and held without trial for 14 months in 1977. “There were bishops who were accomplices, but not Bergoglio,” Perez Esquivel says. “There is no link relating him to the dictatorship. Bergoglio is questioned because it is said he did not do enough to get two priests out of prison while he was the superior of the Jesuits. But I know personally that many bishops requested the military junta to release prisoners and priests but they were not heeded.”

In any event, Bergoglio has lived with the allegations for years and, as Pope Francis, will have to do so for many more to come.

As usual, you are right.
From the LA Times, quote:
"Meanwhile, Nicolas Maduro, the interim president of Venezuela, credited Chavez for Bergoglio's election.
'Chavez had some influence in this naming a South American pope,' Maduro said in an interview over state television in Caracas, the capital. 'A new hand arrived [in heaven], and Christ told him, South America's moment has arrived.'"

No sense being like that. The reports are conflicting. Clergy were being murdered. I do know there are conflicting reports. And I refuse to jump to a conclusion.
But even the best of men have done things they regret.
 

EagleSmack

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What makes you think that?

Where is it?

As usual, you are right.
From the LA Times, quote:
"Meanwhile, Nicolas Maduro, the interim president of Venezuela, credited Chavez for Bergoglio's election.
'Chavez had some influence in this naming a South American pope,' Maduro said in an interview over state television in Caracas, the capital. 'A new hand arrived [in heaven], and Christ told him, South America's moment has arrived.'"

And this is the guy that leads the nation? Geez.