Pope Francis is calling for public and church institutions in his native Argentina to step up assistance to the tens of thousands of people left homeless by torrential rains that have killed at least 52 people.
The death toll from massive flooding in Argentina has risen to 56, prompting the government to declare three days of national mourning and drawing a message of concern from Pope Francis.
Argentina proposed a creative way out of its debt showdown Friday night, describing a mix of cash and bonds that it suggested would amount to a huge profit, but not a gargantuan one, for the investors it calls “vulture funds.”
Sergio Sanchez stood behind Pope Francis at his Vatican inauguration ceremony, wide-eyed amid all the pomp, glitter and VIPs of a slice of history.
The election of Pope Francis has prompted soul-searching in his native Argentina, where the 1970s “Dirty War” between a military junta and leftist opposition divided the local church.
A Jesuit priest kidnapped and tortured during Argentina’s military dictatorship said he and a fellow abductee priest were not denounced to the rightwing junta by Pope Francis.
Pope Francis was “not complicit” with Argentina’s brutal military dictatorship and pursued a “silent diplomacy,” Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel said on Thursday after meeting with Latin America’s first pontiff.
Pope Francis mixes his Argentine past with his Roman present in his new papal coat of arms, while harking back to a Pope associated with Vatican II for the simple ring that he received during his installation Mass on Tuesday.
For more than a billion Roman Catholics worldwide, he’s Pope Francis. For Argentina’s poorest citizens, crowded in “misery villages” throughout the capital, he’s proudly known as one of their own, a true “slum pope.”
For a man who has embraced humility, the new pope’s first moments in the spotlight must have come with mixed emotions, a fact perhaps best understood by the woman who has known him her whole life.
Pope Francis is rarely talked about without mention of his humility, his reluctance to talk about himself. The self-effacement, admirers say, is why he has hardly ever denied one of the harshest allegations against him: That he was among church leaders who actively supported Argentina’s murderous dictatorship.
On the streets in Buenos Aires, the stories about the cardinal who has become the first pope from the Americas often include a very ordinary backdrop: The city bus during rush hour.
US President Barack Obama offered “warm wishes” on behalf of the American people to newly elected Pope Francis on Wednesday, hailing the Argentine as “the first pope from the Americas.”
