Father Bergoglio's List

[AndyP2010]

Sandro Magister

It is interesting how one’s secrets get out, I’m stunned

Unknown until yesterday. Because to lift the veil from this hidden face of the past of Pope Francis for the first time a book has now been published by EMI, small in its dimensions but explosive in its content. It will be in Italian bookstores as of October 3, and then gradually in eight other countries of the world where translations are already underway. “Bergoglio’s List" is its title. And one thinks immediately of “Schindler’s list” immortalized by the film of Steven Spielberg. Because the substance is the same, as the subtitle of the book says: “Those saved by Francis during the dictatorship. The story never told."

The provincial of the Jesuits at the time had succeeded in giving the generals the idea that he had taken refuge at his Colegio Máximo of San Miguel, waiting for better days. But what the book reveals for the first time is a great deal more.

Nello Scavo, a legal affairs reporter for “Avvenire” and the author of the investigation, discovered by tracking down numerous escapees and putting their testimonies together like a puzzle that Bergoglio had silently stitched together a clandestine network that succeeded in saving many dozens if not hundreds of persons in danger of their lives.

But Bergoglio was the only one who held all the strings. The elderly Jesuit Juan Manuel Scannone, who is today the most important theologian of Argentina and the one most esteemed by the current pope, was also at San Miguel at the time. But he didn’t have a clue. Only after many years did he and others begin to confide in each other and understand. "If one of us had known and had been abducted and subjected to torture, the whole network of protection would have fallen apart. Father Bergoglio was aware of this risk, and for this reason he kept everything secret. A secret that he maintained even afterward, because he never wanted to boast about that exceptional mission of his.”

The “list” of Bergoglio is a collection of highly diverse personal stories, which make for exhilarating reading, whose common characteristic is that the people in them were saved by him.

There is Alicia Oliveira, the first woman to become a judge in the criminal courts in Argentina and also the first to be dismissed after the military coup, non-Catholic and not even baptized, who went underground and was taken by Bergoglio, in the trunk of his car, to the college of San Miguel, to see her three children.

 

[zab]

Wow, stunned is the word. I have a new found respect for our Holy Father, Pope Francis. Can’t wait to read the book.

 

[kozlosap]

I can’t wait to read this book! Maybe when some of these stories are out to the world, those who doubt the Holy Father will rethink their opinions.

 

[zab]

I’m surprised that this thread did not get more of a response. This story is the thing that movies are made of. Can’t you just see Father Bergoglio, during a time of persecution, hiding a woman in the trunk of his car to take her to the college of San Miguel to visit her three children?

 

[agnes_therese]

I’m surprised that this thread did not get more of a response. This story is the thing that movies are made of. Can’t you just see Father Bergoglio, during a time of persecution, hiding a woman in the trunk of his car to take her to the college of San Miguel to visit her three children?

I’m sure there will be more discussion after the English translation of the book comes out. I wish the article had said when we can expect it.