Pope Francis claimed that the Argentina Government sought “to cut my head off” when he served as archbishop of Buenos Aires more than ten years ago by backing false accusations that he had assisted the military dictatorship of the 1970s.
Francis made his statements on April 29 in a private chat with Jesuits. Francis is also a Jesuit and the comments were published on Tuesday in the Italian Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica, as is customary after such meetings.
Francis was asked by a Hungarian Jesuit during his visit about his relationship with the late Father Frenc Jalics, a Hungarian-born Jesuit who worked in a Buenos Aires shantytown and was detained by the military on suspicion of aiding Marxist rebels.
Jalics and another Jesuit priest, Uruguayan Orlando Yorio, were both detained in 1976. Jalics passed away in 2021, while Yorio died in 2000.
Francis was accused of betraying the two priests while he was Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the head of the Argentine Jesuits during the military’s “dirty war” against leftists by an Argentine journalist after Francis was elected pope in 2013.
