"Jorge is Against Regimes" - Interview with Sister of Pope Francis

The other day I was reading a thread and someone said that Pope Francis was 'a Nazi like Pope Benedict' and that 'the family of Pope Francis fled Italy because they were war criminals'. So I did some research and found that Pope Francis was born in 1936 in Argentina BEFORE WWII ended. His family left to escape the Facist government that was building there. This family history instilled him Pope Francis a dislike of 'regimes', says his sister.

Vatican Insider - Interview with sister of Pope Francis

"Jorge is against regimes. It is because of fascism that our father emigrated"

The Pope's sister: "This is why he never supported Videla. He helped many persecuted people"
(vatican insider)"My father escaped from Italy because of fascism: do you think it is possible that my brother could be an accomplice of a military dictatorship? It would have been like betraying his memory."

Maria Elena Bergoglio is very kind and determined. You cannot mistake her, she is the female photocopy of her brother Jorge, and they are the last survivors of the family that their father Mario and their mother Regina brought from Piedmont to Argentina.

There are a lot of 'regimes' on this planet. LOTS.

Pope Francis was in office while the dictator Jorge Rafael Videla and the Dirty War in Argentina was going on. He didn't become part of the machine of the regime, but he also didn't openly fight against it. info here He was cautious and, in my opinion, acted much like Pius XII during WWII. Clandestine help to those fighting the regime .. that kind of thing. This is a controversial way of doing things, but that's his style.

Pope Francis has clashed with the President of Argentina. Not in secular matters. But when the government tried to step into matters that Pope Francis considered to be religious territory. (some of those matters I consider to be both religious and secular .. but that's my opinion).

CNN - Pope Francis to meet with Argentinian President whom he has clashed with

My opinion - I hope he just sticks to the religious aspects of life ... helping people pray, bringing people to Christ, helping raise the conditions of the poor without exploiting those that 'have more' ... and I hope he's able to do it without entering any political areas. I'd like to keep religion out of politics. It looks like his 'style' is that of Pope Pius XII (for better or worse) ... quietly help without getting involved in the politics.

Good articles.
This Pope is a lot nicer from my point of view than his predecessors.

You may want to review the wording on your first history quote though.
WW2 could not end in 1936, because it started three years later.
However, Italian Fascism did start in the 1920's, Marcia su Roma etc. So that is why Bergoglio Sr. left.
In fact, so did my grandfather - he worked in Rome, then in Berlin, as a diplomat attached to religious issues, from where he was expelled by the Nazis for criticising the regime.

Originally posted by Kokatsi
WW2 could not end in 1936, because it started three years later.

I said that Pope Francis was born in 1936 in Argentina and that WWII wasn't over until much later. So there is no way that his family could have been war criminals fleeing Italy. Did I not say all that correctly?? I thought I got it correct .....

Originally posted by FlyersFan
My opinion - I hope he just sticks to the religious aspects of life ... helping people pray, bringing people to Christ, helping raise the conditions of the poor without exploiting those that 'have more' ... and I hope he's able to do it without entering any political areas. I'd like to keep religion out of politics. It looks like his 'style' is that of Pope Pius XII (for better or worse) ... quietly help without getting involved in the politics.

That "style" has another name - complacency. It is too politicaly expedient, to not openly critisize the government and then when the dictatorship is toppled start spreading rumours of all the resistors you helped - I call BS. If something is morally wrong and you have set yourself up as the leader of the world's morality then you need to stand up and pronounce it evil. Not wait till it is over and then say what you believed.

Is it just me or are others getting really tired of all the pope threads?

Originally posted by Cinrad

Originally posted by FlyersFan
My opinion - I hope he just sticks to the religious aspects of life ... helping people pray, bringing people to Christ, helping raise the conditions of the poor without exploiting those that 'have more' ... and I hope he's able to do it without entering any political areas. I'd like to keep religion out of politics. It looks like his 'style' is that of Pope Pius XII (for better or worse) ... quietly help without getting involved in the politics.

That "style" has another name - complacency. It is too politicaly expedient, to not openly critisize the government and then when the dictatorship is toppled start spreading rumours of all the resistors you helped - I call BS. If something is morally wrong and you have set yourself up as the leader of the world's morality then you need to stand up and pronounce it evil. Not wait till it is over and then say what you believed.

That's an exaggeration. I grew up in a dictatorship - in many ways not as physically brutal as the later Argentine one - but all the more tiresome because of the sense of being closed in. You could only leave the country illegally or with a special permit, unlike Argentine, but there was far less physical torture and brutality.

What you do not seem to understand is that fear being cast over people by tyranny is not a simple matter of substituting free egos in a situation of slavery.

For that matter, in a real dictatorship, a lot of people do not talk about the power of the tyrant and his henchmen openly. You start to allude to things, to not react.

It is sometimes great when you meet a person who does NOT react to you by aggressive assent to the regime.
Christians like Francis would do more in that situation - and I don't believe he co-operated with the regime from what I know so far. Active resistance is not a stance morally required from all. Not if you are a parent, not if you are responsible for other people - like priests helping the poor, teachers protecting their class from other possible harsher personalities who would cooperate with Power.

Plus, technically, I do believe the Vatican has audited all POSSIBLE popes' lives as much as any intelligence organization would have. (You know, they have their own.) Francis strikes me as a very decent man, and I am not a Catholic.