The Measure of a Man

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This handout picture released on March 14 by the Vatican press office shows Pope Francis arriving for a prayer at Rome's Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica early on his first full day as the head of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.

 
 "In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don't baptize the children of single mothers because they weren't conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today's hypocrites. Those who clericalize the Church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it's baptized!"

Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio

Yesterday's hypocrites might be a man named Cardinal Bergoglio who had knowledge of a pregnant woman kidnapped and killed by the Argentinian junta in 1977. A woman who, like so many others, gave birth in captivity to a child then given to a family "too important" for the adoption to be reversed, the Cardinal was allegedly informed by a monsignor he had personally assigned the task of aiding in the case.

"Bergoglio has a very cowardly attitude when it comes to something so terrible as the theft of babies He says he didn't know anything about it until 1985", the baby's aunt claimed. "He doesn't face this reality and it doesn't bother him The question is how to save his name, save himself. But he can't keep these allegations from reaching the public. The people know how he is."

"He's as uncompromising as Pope John Paul II, in terms of the principles of the Church -- everything it has defended regarding euthanasia, the death penalty, abortion, the right to life, human rights, celibacy of priests; all of this will continue if Bergoglio is made Pope", said a hugely admiring fellow seminarian, Monsignor Osvaldo Musto, embracing the potential of the Cardinal being elevated to that incredibly unimaginable status as a Jesuit.

"He's a very simple man. He's very austere. And also, I think he's an intelligent man and someone who is very good at communicating. In favour of Bergoglio is his pastoral attitude, as they say in the Church -- his relationship with the people", a long-time friend of the new Pope explained enthusiastically.

This is a man who, in 2001, visiting a hospice, washed and kissed the feet of twelve AIDS patients.

He struggled to prevent the Argentine supreme court in its determination to expand access to legal abortions in instances of rape. The president of his country considered his attitude relevant to "medieval times and the Inquisition", in his argument that gay adoptions discriminated against children.

He is held responsible for not having protested at the 1976 - 1983 military junta's brutal crackdown at the time when an estimated 13,000 to 30,000 people died or simply fell off the face of the Earth. The regime that became notorious for kidnapping and killing thousands of its people in a frenzy to eliminate "subversive elements", did not elicit a firm protest from Cardinal Bergoglio.

And that unforgivable history is held to be responsible for the fact that that once-deeply-religious country where over two-thirds of Argentines consider themselves Catholic, fail to attend church. Less than ten percent of the population regularly attend mass. But it was under Cardinal Bergoglio's leadership that the bishops of Argentina made an apology for the church's failures in protecting its followers.

As Archbishop of Buenes Aires, Bergoglio had excellent relations with the country's Jewish community; in 2007 he attended Rosh Hashanah services at the Benei Tikva Slijot synagogue. The director of interfaith affairs for the American Jewish Committee, Rabbi David Rosen describes the new pope as a "warm and sweet and modest man". After the AMIA Jewish community centre was bombed in 1994 he "showed solidarity with the Jewish community." He was the first public personality to sign a petition seeking justice in that bombing, and he visited the rebuilt AMIA building to talk with Jewish leaders.


Will this pope be able to accomplish what his predecessors could not? Convincing his flock that the church really does feel responsible for the scandals that have plagued it over the damning issue of child molestation? Will it be within his capabilities to root out the corruption said to infest the Holy See to its very core? Is it possible that he will be able to cleanse the church's treasury and finances of its criminal elements?

This is obviously a man of high intelligence as a Jesuit, since intellectual prowess and study are vital to that discipline. He is a man who has had great responsibilities and has not always conducted himself in a clear and obvious manner that would find favour with his followers and critics alike, although he is also said to have accomplished much behind the scenes, and simply failed out of a sense of extreme humility to counter the accusations leveled against him by his detractors.

But he is a man withal, subject to the emotional foibles, fears and insecurities of all men. But he is also imbued with a high spiritual calling, and now acts as the Bishop of Rome, with the Vatican representing the Holy Roman Catholic Church and its 1.2-billion followers, a disproportionately large percentage of whom are represented by Latin America. It is his turn to try to shape the church in the next few years in a way that will give it more credit and greater trust than it has enjoyed of late.

No one, religious or not, would wish him any but good fortune.