Episode 26: The Papal Consequences

This last week has been both Passover and Easter, a festive, enjoyable time for both Jews and Cristians alike. As such, my cousin decided to come and take advantage of my being here for a couple more weeks and visit me from England. She brought with her many things that I have been missing for a while - English humour (hmm), English football (it had been too long since I'd had a good face-to-face Spurs vs Arsenal debate) and...err... Japanese style photo snapping. Vague stereotypes aside, she brought one thing which I'd almost completely forgotten about - a copy of the Economist. Apart from the cover photo (which was a cartoon the country of Cyprus sinking amidst huge debts, and incidently a place where I will be visiting with a large group of friends later on in the summer), there was one really interesting article - that about Argentina and the pope.




Now, it is available online (here), and I had already posted about Pope Francisco (here), but I'm going to summarise it in my own words with some other comments - because its not so often you have someone with both and inside and outside perspective of something so important in a country so...far away!

It was thought very unlikely that the Argentinian candidate would win the Papal election, so Cristina really must have been ruing her luck. Indeed, as the article muses, whilst all other television channels were showing non-stop coverage of the inauguration, the state owned Channel 7 (which, in fairness, I never watch) was showing cartoons.

Anyway, the article speaks of damage limitation (Cristina, the Presidenta, quickly went to Rome to sit down with her prior adversary to give him a mate  andsome compulsory praises), of obvious requests (for example that he wade into the Falkland Islands debate, not that he ever would - even though this appears to be one of the few things they actually agree on) and most importantly of a changing political landscape.

What I mean by this is that gradually, both sides are using old skeletons against each other. For example how a document from 1979 (remember, Bergoglio at 76 is on the old side) appears to suggest he helped deny a Priest access to Argentina on the grounds of suspected Guerrilla contact, although much of this is disputed territory seemingly to me taken out of context. On the other hand, he accuses her of not doing enough to help the poor (although I would add here that she does quite a lot to help the poor, and without going into it deeper I would imagine it is a dig at the corruption which is so widespread that is holds back even further developments)

What seems to be beyond doubt is that unless the government cede some ground, there will be tensions - if not directly from the fact that the clergy here now has some new found power and sway. Not that the the Kirchner government needs any new issues - with enough on their plate, the 'kirchneristas' held parties in some of the Villas to mark his inauguration. In addition to that, you might even be lucky enough to see one of these government posters flying around if you walk about enough...