Under the Robes: Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?

One must wonder about a guy who goes around in a white gown all the time.

The great detective novelist and failed oil tycoon Raymond Chandler, who knew all about the seamy nature of power, observed that you can always spot the biggest gangster in town by the way he “dresses to please”. The present Bishop of Rome seems to be an avid student of Chandler.

Jorge Bergoglio has always been someone who projects a pleasing public image, no doubt because of the tarnished trail of murder and corruption he has left in his wake. Ever since his salad days as a friend and public relations frontman of the murderous military junta in Argentina, Bergoglio has relied on his smiling, beneficent visage to distract from all the bones in his closet. Perhaps that’s why his nickname among Latin American Bishops is “El Camaleon”: The Chameleon.

Switching his image is a special skill of the man called “Pope Francis”. His rapid ascent from a lowly priest to head of the Jesuits and Archbishop of Buenos Aires was due to his personal friendship with butchers like Jose Lopez Rega. The latter was the founder of the death squads that tortured and killed thousands of Argentines, including Bergoglio’s own priests, during the “Dirty Wars” of the 1970’s and ‘80’s. Bergoglio was so often seen in the jovial company of the dictator General Jorge Videla that they were nicknamed “los gamelos Jorges”: The Jorge Twins. Yet these bloody associations did not prevent Bergoglio from simultaneously posturing, like he does now, as a church reformer and politically correct defender of human rights.

Clearly, an accomplished con artist like Curious George was destined for even greater criminality in the Church of Rome, especially following the disgrace and deposing of Pope Benedict early in 2013 and the need for rapid damage control. Jorge was just what a tottering papacy ordered.

Well, El Camaleon is at it again next week, in yet another staged public performance. Bergoglio is coming to Canada on July 24, ostensibly to emit a few crocodile tears over the legions of indigenous children his church slaughtered for their own good. Hypocrisy and spin doctoring aside, it’s a curious thing for Bergoglio to be doing, since he sees nothing wrong with the murder of “pagan unbelievers”.

The last time Pope Francis came to North America, in 2017, he “beatified” Junipero Serra, a Catholic missionary who enslaved and worked to death over 100,000 Indians on church plantations in California. Bergoglio remarked, “We are inspired by his zeal”.