Pope Francis died in Easter of Resurrectionon Monday, April 21 and the announcement of his death has aroused different reflections in the world. One of them is why he did not return to his native country.
Despite having visited four of the five borderline nations -Brazil in 2013, Bolivia and Paraguay in 2015 and Chile in 2018 -, Francisco did not stop in Argentina or collect their belongings, since when he traveled to Rome, in March 2013, to participate in the concolave that would choose Pope, he carried only a small suitcase and an air ticket of return that he never used.
“When he left Buenos Aires for the conclave, something sad looked at him, he was preparing a room in the priestly home of the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Flores for his retirement,” the priest Guillermo Marcó told Clarín Diario Marin Marin, who was his spokesman for Bergoglio when Bergoglio was a archbishop of Buenos Aires.
At the beginning Francisco would have postponed his trip to Argentina for the large number of commitments that he had as high pontiff, but later he could have postponed his visit so as not to remain in the middle of an internal political.
Argentina “is a country with very polarized political opinions and, if he came, he would necessarily fall into that polarization,” he explains to EFE Sol Pietro, Sociologist and professor at the University of Buenos Aires and researcher of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), when asked for the reason that Jorge Mario Bergoglio did not step on his country again.
According to the latest survey on religious beliefs and attitudes of the Program of Society, Culture and Religion of the Ceil-Conicet, in 2019, 27.4 % considered it a “world leader who denounces the situations of injustice on the planet”, 27 % believed it “too much involved in politics instead of dealing with the spiritual part” and 40 % was indifferent ”.
Pietro, who is also the author of the book The end of the world. Pope Francis from sociologyHe explained that these statistics reflect the political polarization that exists for many years in Argentina, of which Francisco did not want to be part.
However, those who visited or exchanged mail with him claim that he had very inside and felt the problems of Argentina.
Father Lorenzo ‘Toto’ of Vedia, from the parish Virgen de los Milagros de Caacupé, Located in a town in the Barracas neighborhood, in Buenos Aires and one of the ´curas villeros’ closest to Francisco, he said to EFE that he “has always been very present.”
“We have sent him some e-mail or we have made some call at some important pastoral moment, such as when it was the anniversary of the home ´de Christ ‘or a school of trades that he had had a lot of link. He sent a video and a letter,” he said.
Francisco and the presidents of Argentina
The sociologist stressed that Pope Francis had preferences towards some Argentine institutions and highlighted a September 2024 sermon in the Vatican, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the first meeting with popular movements, in which he criticized Javier Milei’s government for police violence deployed against a group of protesters.
“The government instead of paying social justice, paid pepper gas,” said the high pontiff.
Pietro said: “It is a very clear, very explicit example, that I was aware of what was happening in Argentina.”
All Argentine presidents have met Pope Francis throughout his mandates and, to all, the high pontiff expressed their support, But who did more times was the Peronist former president Cristina Fernández, up to seven times, several of them in the Latin American countries visited by the Pope and where she moved.
The president who had the most brief encounter was Mauricio Macri, of the Conservative Republican Proposal (PRO), whom he received for just 22 minutes. It was an appointment marked by coldness, as the Argentine press agrees.
Everyone arrived at the Vatican with quarrels, with pending issues, less Alberto Fernández, also recognize the media on Monday, but all highlighted his humanity today and the pride that the world has had an Argentine pope.