PopeWatch has long been convinced that the key to understanding Pope Francis is looking at his life in Argentina. George Neumayr looks at one part of his life in Argentina;
The “boss” to whom Pope Francis referred is Esther Ballestrino de Careaga. He has described her as a “Paraguayan woman” and a “fervent communist.” He considers her one of his most important mentors. “I owe a huge amount to that great woman,” he has said, saying that she “taught me so much about politics.” (He worked for her as an assistant at Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory in Buenos Aires.)
“She often read Communist Party texts to me and gave them to me to read. So I also got to know that very materialistic conception. I remember that she also gave me the statement from the American Communists in defense of the Rosenbergs, who had been sentenced to death,” he has said. Learning about communism, he said, “through a courageous and honest person was helpful. I realized a few things, an aspect of the social, which I then found in the social doctrine of the Church.” As the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he took pride in helping her hide the family’s Marxist literature from the authorities who were investigating her. According to the author James Carroll, Bergoglio smuggled her communist books, including Marx’s Das Kapital, into a “Jesuit library.”
“Tragically, Ballestrino herself ‘disappeared’ at the hands of security forces in 1977,” reported Vatican correspondent John Allen. “Almost three decades later, when her remains were discovered and identified, Bergoglio gave permission for her to be buried in the garden of a Buenos Aires church called Santa Cruz, the spot where she had been abducted. Her daughter requested that her mother and several other women be buried there because ‘it was the last place they had been as free people.’ Despite knowing full well that Ballestrino was not a believing Catholic, the future pope readily consented.”
These biographical details throw light on the pope’s ideological instincts. Yet many commentators have ignored them, breezily casting his leftism as a bit confused but basically harmless.
“I must say that communists have stolen our flag. The flag of the poor is Christian,” he said in 2014. Such a comment would have startled his predecessors. They didn’t see communism as a benign exaggeration.
Go here to read the rest. Imagine the reaction if Pope Francis were to look back fondly at a fascist intellectual he had known.
Communists refuse to acknowledge the sovereign person who institutes the state. Body and soul, the sovereign person is denied. The party is all that matters. Free will is denied to the person and freedom. I remember the goods nuns saying that they were the biggest communists, that is, living in community. The difference being the informed consent that is given to living in community. In communism the individual sovereign person does not count and is not acknowledged except as he is valuable to support the party. The rest of my comment must be censored. I suggest everyone hear Archbishop Sheen’s Life is Worth Living Series: The Glory of Being American, especially Pope Francis.
I do not give one hoot why this Argentinian Marxist Peronist heretic thinks the way he does. Communism has been formally rejected and proscribed:
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius11/P11DIVIN.HTM
Depose and anathematize Jorge Bergoglio!
Inneresting. It’s doubtful she taught him much ‘about politics’. She likely taught him political discourse conducted through social theory babble conjoined to a habit of responding to what’s often just the human condition by lobbing accusations at approved bogies. Most leftists have a hat full of bogies. The cast of characters changes from one time period to another and one place to another, but the impulse is the same. Francis’ particular bogies are industrialists (especially in munitions and aerospace) and conscientious Catholics.
The Pontiff is an old fool. He is a product of his environment, which is a nation blessed with a good climate, vast arable land and run by a series of fools. The Pontiff closes his eyes to the horror committed by Communism because he cannot conceive of the world outside of his own. He is who he is. The greater sin was committed by the Fools who elected him Pope.
I believe she was a mother of a “disappeared” then disappeared herself as happened to lefties under right side government. South America has seen the pendulum swing. Having been a catholic witness you would think the pope would be more balanced.
Penguins Fan: “The greater sin was committed by the Fools who elected him Pope.”
Amen! Right again! We can survive an incompetent – even a heretical – Pontiff. But can we survive the darn fools who elected him, and worse yet, the darn fools who support and adore him.
[…] ON HARDLINE COMMUNIST FRANCISMENTOR, ESTHER BALLESTRINO DE CAREAGA […]
Is anyone really surprised?
“The greater sin was committed by the fools who elected him Pope”.
I fervently hope that at the next conclave the majority of Cardinal-electors
will have had enough of Francis’ ways and opt to elect a man utterly unlike
him. Basta!
More evidence that Pope Francis has had lifelong political and Communists leanings. No surprise, of course. But wouldn’t it be heartening to hear about what he has done in the pursuit of sanctity for himself and others.
There are some obvious factual errors in the excerpt from the book. Hopefully they did not make it into the printed version.
1) “As the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he took pride in helping her hide the family’s Marxist literature from the authorities who were investigating her.” Bergoglio became archbishop in 1998. She disappeared in 1977. How did he help her hide books in a Jesuit library when she had already been missing for over 21 years?
2) The linked passage says, “socialist agitator Saul Alinsky — a mentor to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.” I don’t think even Obama’s most ardent detractors would argue that Alinsky was a “mentor” to Obama, considering he died in 1972, the year Obama turned 11.
There are several other inaccuracies in the excerpt at the Spectator, but these two factual errors jumped out at me right away.
Good catch Aaron. I hope that the book is more accurate than this.
“Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, The Truth Is I Never Left You, I Kept My Promise” Father forgive them, I think they do know what they do
😯