Il rapporto tra la Chiesa cattolica, la dittatura militare argentina e la Santa Sede negli anni 1976-1983

160 Pages·2017·8.95 MB·Italian

Corso di Laurea Magistrale in
Relazioni Internazionali Comparate
Ordinamento ex D.M. 270/2004

Tesi di Laurea

Il rapporto tra la Chiesa cattolica, la
dittatura militare argentina e la Santa
Sede negli anni 1976-1983

Relatore
Ch. Prof. Giovanni Vian
Correlatore
Ch. Prof. Luis Fernando Beneduzi

Laureando
Davide Zoppellari
Matricola 838271

Anno Accademico
2016/2017
2
Indice

0. Abstract (in inglese) 9

0. Introduzione (in italiano) 13

1. Capitolo 1 – Informazioni di carattere storico 17
1.1. Tradizione democratica in America Latina 17
1.2. Periodo antecedente al 1976 e colpo di stato 19
1.3. Proceso de Reorganización Nacional 22
1.3.1. Chi erano i sovversivi per i militari? 25
1.3.2. I desaparecidos e il loro processo di sparizione 26
1.3.3. Lo strano caso dei mondiali di calcio del giugno 1978 in Argentina 29
1.3.4. Las Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo 30
1.3.5. Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo 31
1.3.6. Verso la fine del regime 32
1.4. L’uso sistematico della tortura da parte dei militari 33

2. Capitolo 2 – Uno sguardo specifico ai fenomeni che hanno caratterizzato questo periodo 37
2.1. La religione cristiana cattolica in Argentina 37
2.2. Il Mito della Nazione Cattolica 41
2.3. I preti considerati comunisti e sovversivi: la Teologia della Liberazione e il Movimento
dei Sacerdoti per il Terzo Mondo 46
2.4. Il clero castrense e il ruolo del cappellano militare 52

3. Capitolo 3 – Chiesa cattolica, dittatura militare e Santa Sede: le relazioni 59
3.1. Il rapporto del clero nei confronti della dittatura 59
3
3.2. Quanta consapevolezza avevano i pontefici che si sono succeduti dei problemi
dell’Argentina? 91
3.3. La visita alla ESMA della Commissione interamericana dei diritti umani
dell’Organizzazione degli Stati Americani (OSA) nel 1979 102
3.4. Repressione: nemmeno il clero ne fu risparmiato 105
3.5. Il caso dei sacerdoti Gesuiti Jalics e Yorio 120

4. Capitolo 4 – La dittatura torna a far parlare di sé. L’elezione di papa Francesco 135
4.1. L’elezione del nuovo papa e le prime pagine dei giornali 135
4.2. Testimonianze che negano il coinvolgimento di Bergoglio con la dittatura 140

5. Conclusione 145

6. Bibliografia 149

7. Sitografia 151

4
Il rapporto tra la Chiesa cattolica, la
dittatura militare argentina e la Santa
Sede negli anni 1976-1983

5
6
“Si renderà conto che abbiamo fatto cose peggiori dei nazisti.”
Adolfo Scilingo, capitano della Marina implicato nei voli della morte

“Noi abbiamo ammazzato, stiamo ammazzando e continueremo ad ammazzare fin quando
non rimarrà un solo maledetto sovversivo in questo Paese. E non ci limiteremo a eliminare i
sovversivi, ma anche gli istigatori, i complici, gli amici e gli indifferenti.”
Augustín Valladares, colonnello

“I romani si comportarono molto civilmente con i primi cristiani, a confronto con quello
che succederà a lei.”
Testimonianza di padre Patrick Rice, appartenente alla confraternita dei Piccoli Fratelli del
Vangelo e sequestrato nell’ottobre del 1976

“Stiamo vivendo un momento di grande confusione nel quale sono stati smarriti alti valori
etici. Supponiamo che sia stato individuato un cancro, la sovversione, che vuole distruggere ogni
forma di vita civile in Argentina, e s’interviene per estirparlo. Con il passare del tempo, si vuole
persuadere che il cancro sia benigno e lo sradicamento maligno.”
Armando Lambruschini, ammiraglio della Marina e membro della seconda Giunta militare

7
8
0. Abstract

During the 20th century, Latin America was characterized by two main phenomena: on one hand,
the presence of many dictatorships in the majority of its States, sometimes favoured by the Unites
States of America. On the other hand, since the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires in the 16th
century onwards, the Christian Catholic influence entered this vast subcontinent becoming the main
professed religion that also in the period examined in this paper (from 1976 to 1983) was and still
nowadays is (the current average of the South American Christian Catholic believers is about
70,3%). Probably, all those Latin American dictatorial governments are interesting subjects to study
but, at the same time, each of them – in an environment influenced by the spread of Cold War
between the Soviet Union and US – had its own features that distinguished it from the others.
Hence, why did I choose to analyse Argentina and not Brazil, Chile or Uruguay? Surely, they are as
stimulating as the Argentinian case but, in my opinion, the former has a surplus that attracted my
attention more than the others. Argentina’s history was characterized by two factors: the first, the
absence of a stable form of democracy because of the frequent military coups that overthrew the
democratic governments that had been legally elected by the population. The second, the intrinsic
presence of religion, particularly of the Christian Catholic religion, in each aspect of society.
The title of my final dissertation is the relationship among the Catholic Church, the Argentinian
military dictatorship and the Holy See in the period from 1976 to 1983. What I would like to
demonstrate is that there was a link between the Church and the militaries of the dictatorship that
ruled Argentina for about eight years from 1976 up to 1983 and that these two institutions were not
separated as they were in other Catholic States. Sometimes they were almost the same thing, with
reciprocal influences. Moreover, another important aspect that I would like to put in evidence is that
the Holy See, since the first months of the regime, knew the situation of the Country across the
Ocean and did quite nothing to cope with it.
To introduce my work it is central to highlight that on March 24th 1976 the Armed Forces took the
power through a coup d’état that abolished all the constitutional guarantees. The new government
was led by a Junta, which was composed by the heads of the Army, of the Navy and of the Aviation
and self-called it National Reorganization Process, implemented what was called state terrorism
which was based on the elimination of all kinds of subversions (real and ideological). The war
against the Marxist-communist rebels was fought in an uncommon way using false imprisonments,
unjustified arrests, tortures, murders, and detentions in illegal buildings (the Centros Clandestinos
de Detención) without any kind of juridical trials. As a result, there was a permanent, widespread
and well-known violation of unalienable human rights, also towards common citizens who did not
have anything to do with subversive organizations or guerrilla movements, that caused
condemnations from the public opinion all over the world. For these reasons, the period in which
this last Argentinian military dictatorship took place is identified with the expression ‘dirty war’.
This particular situation also brought to the worldwide knowledge a Spanish word: desaparecidos.
The people to whom this name was attributed were those whose freedom and rights were cancelled:
they were illegal prisoners. They were often incarcerated without any serious accusation in places
they did not know, they could not speak with their families, they were tortured in order to confess
9
what the military officers wanted to know (usually the soldiers were interested in learning new
inhabitants’ names that they would then capture, and so forth in a vicious circle) and, quite always,
they were killed. The most famous way the soldiers used to murder people was to drop them from
an airplane or an helicopter or a ship down in the Atlantic Ocean or in the River Plate while they
were on drugs or anaesthetized but still alive. Parents, relatives, and friends could not have any
information about them, where they were detained, neither how they felt, nor they could know if
their dears were dead or still alive. The families were living with a widespread sense of uncertainty
and fear.
The only institution to which both the families, which referred to in order to have some news about
or some help for their desaparecidos, and the missing, who applied to in order to plead for their
liberation, to beg the soldiers to stop the harassments on them or to have the comfort of God, turned
to was the Church. The majority of its members in those years, however, acted differently in regard
to what we can imagine or be accustomed to. Instead of proclaiming peace and defending oppressed
people, they fomented violence and the ideals of the Army that were objectively anti-Christian.
What is relevant is that the origin of this link between the Catholic Church and the Army in
Argentina did not arise in the 70s; it had far roots. The ecclesiastical institution, in fact, has always
had a predominant role in society alongside the Army. Together, in the first half of the last century,
they bore a myth that conditioned the following decades of that Nation. Its name was Catholic
Nation Myth. According to it, the Catholic religion and the Armed Forces were the pillars of the
Argentinian society, the entities that favoured the construction of the State. In a place where anyone
had nothing in common with others, in a place based on diversity, religion acted as a bond creating
a Country dependent and dominated by Christianism. As it is well known, for centuries the Roman
Church had always been detaining a stance against communism, which Argentina would have
reached if capitalism and liberalism had remained at the foundations of its political system.
Consequently, they needed to be eliminated and substituted by a temporal order that reflected what
the Pope said in its encyclicals. Notwithstanding, seeing the outcome after 35 years, the desire to
keep unite and in peace a political community basing it on religion proved to be a failure that led to
the most bloody and painful Argentinian dictatorship ever. In 1983 the outcome was the following:
a fragile democracy that needed to be reinforced; an unreliable Episcopate who had sided with the
killers and a Church who had to say sorry to its believers for acting in the wrong way against God’s
precepts; a population forever scarred by pain, and, finally, about 30000 victims, most of which
have never reappeared (leaving families without a corpse in the coffin to cry upon).
Therefore, I pose myself a question that is at the base of this thesis: how is it possible that the
ministers of religion, who should preach God’s word and love, were those who did not condemn but
supported, justified and explained, using the passages of the Gospel improperly, the violence
perpetrated by Armed Forces? Using the famous sentence “por algo será” they presumed that
anybody who were arrested had committed any crime so as to explain the custody. However, it was
not like that. In fact, unlike the others States, Argentina was the only country in which the great
majority of its bishops did not condemn the crimes. On the contrary, they blessed the soldiers and
confessed themselves to unburden their consciences. They were accommodating and accomplices,
giving legitimation to the military. The other part of the clergy who helped the most the
implementation of the Process was the castrensian clergy: it was and still is a Church reserved only
10