After his selection as Pope we quickly learned that Benedict XVI had been a member of the Wehrmacht as a teenager. That was put aside by most as an artifact of history; in 1944-1945 there weren’t very many 16-18 year-old kids in Germany able to escape military service in the Nazi Army.
Newly-selected Francis I, however, was an adult when his country was ruled by a ruthless dictatorship which was disappearing its enemies left and right. He has been accused in a 2005 book by an Argentine journalist of helping to hide several of the regime’s political prisoners from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. Moreover, a History prof at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, TX has a link-heavy post which asserts:
Unlike Catholic officials in neighboring Chile and Brazil, where priests, bishops, and even cardinals spoke out against human rights abuses and defended victims of abuses, in Argentina, the Catholic Church was openly complicit in the military regime’s repression. Bergoglio was not exempt from this involvement: military officers have testified that Bergoglio helped the Argentine military regime hide political prisoners when human rights activists visited the country. And Bergoglio himself had to testify regarding the kidnapping of two priests who he stripped of their religious licenses shortly before they were kidnapped and tortured. This isn’t just a case of Bergoglio being a member of an institution that supported a brutal regime; it’s a case of Bergoglio himself having ties, direct and indirect, to that very regime.
As a friend of mine said on Facebook, “aren’t these candidates vetted?” My response to that question was “He may have been vetted, which is worse.” I suggested the Cardinals may have said “Meh, no matter, Pope is a pretty dictatorial position too.” The Church has not been very good at owning up to its clergy’s bad behavior over the past twenty years.
I don’t know that these accusations are true, but given the Church’s problems with clergy’s child abuse in the United States and its imprisonment of Irish girls in Magdalene laundries, I’d have thought the Cardinals would have looked pretty hard to find a new Pope who was untainted by questionable behavior.
My guess is the same as yours. When I was a PhD student, my major advisor was a Big Name Catholic. Based on his comments, and other scholars at conferences, everyone’s hands are dirty. This may be as clean as they come.
I agree with Juli. This is as good as it gets. The astonishing papal choice was John XXIII and look how long he lasted. Consider Pius XII (World War II). Or for that matter, Alexander VI, nee Rodrigo Borgia.