Die nuwe pous, Franciskus 1, is ‘n Jesuit. Die Jesuïete, wat ingestel is op sendingwerk en wie se werk deur aalmoese geborg word, se wortels gaan terug op die vyftiende eeu na die baie bekende Ignatius van Lojale, die skrywer van die Geestelike Oefeninge.
Vandag praat die Jesuïete oor hulself as ‘n groep wat
teruggaan op ‘n vergadering van sewe studente in Parys, waaronder Ignatius, wat
in 1534 besluit het hulle sal na hul studies hul vriendskap bly vashou deur as
groep ooreenkomstig die evangelie in armoed te leef en op ‘n sending na Jerusalem
te gaan.
Ignatius, ‘n bekende rykmanskind en rokjagter wat sleg
verwond is in ‘n oorlogsgeveg teen die Franse, het tydens sy herstel van die
beserings boeke gesoek om te lees. Hy wou graag romans lees, maar toe is daar
net godsdienstige boeke in die omgewing.
Op daardie stadium het hy agtergekom dat sy geestelike
leesstof hom innerlik vervuld geraak het. Dit was vir hom ‘n ander ervaring as
die romans wat hom altyd onrustig en gefrustreerd gelaat het. Hy was
introspektief genoeg om deur die ervaring geboeid te bly. Later sou sy
Geestelike Oefeninge hierop voortbou.
Wat my egter van Ignatius interesseer is die ommekeer wat by
hom gebeur het.
Na sy tyd van herstel, het hy Jerusalem toe gegaan om in die
voetspore van die aardse Jesus te volg. Na verdere omswerwinge het hy op ‘n
stadium by ‘n Spaanse dorpie, Manresa, digby Barcelona, oorgebly. Hy wou net ‘n
paar dae daar vertoef, maar dit het uiteindelik 10 maande geword. Groot dele
van die dag het hy in gebed deurgebring, maar hy het ook in ‘n hospies gewerk.
Dit was ‘n tyd waarin hy aan die Geestelike Oefening begin werk het.
In die dorpie, op die walle van ‘n rivier, het hy ‘n visioen
gehad. Vir Ignatius was dit ‘n hartsveranderende ervaring wat vir die res van
sy lewe ‘n baken sou bly.
Dit was, soos hy later geskryf het, ‘n ervaring waarin hy in
‘n paar oomblikke meer geleer het as in die res van sy lewe.
Wat boeiend is, is dat Ignatius nooit vertel het presies wat
die visioen was wat hy gesien het nie. Trouens, dit bly een van die opvallende
aspekte van sy lewe dat hy al hoe meer terughoudend was om oor sy mistieke
ervarings te praat.
Hy het dit as ‘n ontmoeting met God beskryf, soos, het hy
gesê, God werklik is. Dit het hom die skepping in ‘n heel nuwe lig laat sien.
Van toe af kon hy nie na die skepping kyk sonder om God daarin raak te sien
nie. Die genadegawe, skryf iemand, om God in alles raak te sien, is ‘n
hartsmotief van die Jesuïete.
Toe die pous vanaand op die balkon verskyn, met ‘n skugter
regterhand in die lug om die groot skare te groet en kort daarna vra dat die
mense vir hom bid, het ek aan Ignatius die bidder gedink.
Was ‘n skare op daardie plein met die bekendstelling van ‘n
pous ooit so stil?
Gebed, die verlange om God, die binne-tree in die stilte as
ruimte vir die aanraking wat alles anders laat word. Dit is genoeg. ‘n Mens het
nie meer as dit nodig nie: veral nie om rond te praat oor jou mistieke oomblike
nie.
Al die kommentators oor die nuwe pous maak op die televisie melding daarvan dat hierdie nuwe pous soms as kardinaal in sy tuis-stad bus gery het om die armes te gaan besoek en die rykmanslewe vermy (sien ook my blog van gister). Wat natuurlik verklaar waarom hy, as die eerste pous ooit, as Franciskus 1 bekend wil staan.
Maar: daar is ook die skadu-kante wat in berigte oor sy politieke geskiedenis opduik. Hier is 'n berig in die Guardian oor hom:
Benedict XVI gave us words of great comfort and encouragement in the message he delivered on Christmas Eve.
"God anticipates us again and again in unexpected ways," the pope said. "He does not cease to search for us, to raise us up as often as we might need. He does not abandon the lost sheep in the wilderness into which it had strayed. God does not allow himself to be confounded by our sin. Again and again he begins afresh with us".
If these words comforted and encouraged me they will surely have done the same for leaders of the church in Argentina, among many others. To the judicious and fair-minded outsider it has been clear for years that the upper reaches of the Argentine church contained many "lost sheep in the wilderness", men who had communed and supported the unspeakably brutal Western-supported military dictatorship which seized power in that country in 1976 and battened on it for years. Not only did the generals slaughter thousands unjustly, often dropping them out of aeroplanes over the River Plate and selling off their orphan children to the highest bidder, they also murdered at least two bishops and many priests. Yet even the execution of other men of the cloth did nothing to shake the support of senior clerics, including representatives of the Holy See, for the criminality of their leader General Jorge Rafael Videla and his minions.
As it happens, in the week before Christmas in the city of Córdoba Videla and some of his military and police cohorts were convicted by their country's courts of the murder of 31 people between April and October 1976, a small fraction of the killings they were responsible for. The convictions brought life sentences for some of the military. These were not to be served, as has often been the case in Argentina and neighbouring Chile, in comfy armed forces retirement homes but in common prisons. Unsurprisingly there was dancing in the city's streets when the judge announced the sentences.
What one did not hear from any senior member of the Argentine hierarchy was any expression of regret for the church's collaboration and in these crimes. The extent of the church's complicity in the dark deeds was excellently set out by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina's most notable journalists, in his book El Silencio (Silence). He recounts how the Argentine navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, hid from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission the dictatorship's political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them in nothing less than his holiday home in an island called El Silencio in the River Plate. The most shaming thing for the church is that in such circumstances Bergoglio's name was allowed to go forward in the ballot to chose the successor of John Paul II. What scandal would not have ensued if the first pope ever to be elected from the continent of America had been revealed as an accessory to murder and false imprisonment
One would have thought that the Argentine bishops would have seized the opportunity to call for pardon for themselves and put on sackcloth and ashes as the sentences were announced in Córdoba but that has not so far happened.
But happily Their Eminences have just been given another chance to express contrition. Next month the convicted murderer Videla will be arraigned for his part in the killing of Enrique Angelelli, bishop of the Andean diocese of La Rioja and a supporter of the cause of poorer Argentines. He was run off the highway by a hit squad of the Videla régime and killed on 4th August 1976 shortly after Videla's putsch.
Cardinal Bergoglio has plenty of time to be measured for a suit of sackcloth – perhaps tailored in a suitable clerical grey – to be worn when the church authorities are called into the witness box by the investigating judge in the Angelelli case. Ashes will be readily available if the records of the Argentine bishops' many disingenuous and outrightly mendacious statements about Videla and Angelelli are burned.
Hoe nou?
Hier is die nuwe pous se weerwoord:
He was accused of handing over two Jesuit priests who advocated liberation theology to the Argentinian junta’s death squads in 1976. Both men were eventually freed after Bergoglio intervened, although he did not discuss his involvement until much later.
Bergoglio also was accused of turning his back on a family that lost five relatives to the regime in the 1970s, including a young pregnant woman whose child was given to another family.
Bergoglio denied wrongdoing and testified in 2010 that he didn't know about stolen babies until much later, after the dictatorship had collapsed.
Maar: daar is ook die skadu-kante wat in berigte oor sy politieke geskiedenis opduik. Hier is 'n berig in die Guardian oor hom:
Benedict XVI gave us words of great comfort and encouragement in the message he delivered on Christmas Eve.
"God anticipates us again and again in unexpected ways," the pope said. "He does not cease to search for us, to raise us up as often as we might need. He does not abandon the lost sheep in the wilderness into which it had strayed. God does not allow himself to be confounded by our sin. Again and again he begins afresh with us".
If these words comforted and encouraged me they will surely have done the same for leaders of the church in Argentina, among many others. To the judicious and fair-minded outsider it has been clear for years that the upper reaches of the Argentine church contained many "lost sheep in the wilderness", men who had communed and supported the unspeakably brutal Western-supported military dictatorship which seized power in that country in 1976 and battened on it for years. Not only did the generals slaughter thousands unjustly, often dropping them out of aeroplanes over the River Plate and selling off their orphan children to the highest bidder, they also murdered at least two bishops and many priests. Yet even the execution of other men of the cloth did nothing to shake the support of senior clerics, including representatives of the Holy See, for the criminality of their leader General Jorge Rafael Videla and his minions.
As it happens, in the week before Christmas in the city of Córdoba Videla and some of his military and police cohorts were convicted by their country's courts of the murder of 31 people between April and October 1976, a small fraction of the killings they were responsible for. The convictions brought life sentences for some of the military. These were not to be served, as has often been the case in Argentina and neighbouring Chile, in comfy armed forces retirement homes but in common prisons. Unsurprisingly there was dancing in the city's streets when the judge announced the sentences.
What one did not hear from any senior member of the Argentine hierarchy was any expression of regret for the church's collaboration and in these crimes. The extent of the church's complicity in the dark deeds was excellently set out by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina's most notable journalists, in his book El Silencio (Silence). He recounts how the Argentine navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, hid from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission the dictatorship's political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them in nothing less than his holiday home in an island called El Silencio in the River Plate. The most shaming thing for the church is that in such circumstances Bergoglio's name was allowed to go forward in the ballot to chose the successor of John Paul II. What scandal would not have ensued if the first pope ever to be elected from the continent of America had been revealed as an accessory to murder and false imprisonment
One would have thought that the Argentine bishops would have seized the opportunity to call for pardon for themselves and put on sackcloth and ashes as the sentences were announced in Córdoba but that has not so far happened.
But happily Their Eminences have just been given another chance to express contrition. Next month the convicted murderer Videla will be arraigned for his part in the killing of Enrique Angelelli, bishop of the Andean diocese of La Rioja and a supporter of the cause of poorer Argentines. He was run off the highway by a hit squad of the Videla régime and killed on 4th August 1976 shortly after Videla's putsch.
Cardinal Bergoglio has plenty of time to be measured for a suit of sackcloth – perhaps tailored in a suitable clerical grey – to be worn when the church authorities are called into the witness box by the investigating judge in the Angelelli case. Ashes will be readily available if the records of the Argentine bishops' many disingenuous and outrightly mendacious statements about Videla and Angelelli are burned.
Hoe nou?
Hier is die nuwe pous se weerwoord:
He was accused of handing over two Jesuit priests who advocated liberation theology to the Argentinian junta’s death squads in 1976. Both men were eventually freed after Bergoglio intervened, although he did not discuss his involvement until much later.
Bergoglio also was accused of turning his back on a family that lost five relatives to the regime in the 1970s, including a young pregnant woman whose child was given to another family.
Bergoglio denied wrongdoing and testified in 2010 that he didn't know about stolen babies until much later, after the dictatorship had collapsed.
