Relatives of those who disappeared during Argentina’s “Dirty War” criticised the new Pope yesterday, saying Francis had failed to confront the military dictatorship in his country.


Some 30,000 people were killed during the war and relatives of victims have claimed the new pontiff had a “very cowardly attitude” towards the regime.

The allegations came as it was revealed the former Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires lobbied the Vatican to make the Falkland Islands part of an Argentinian diocese and said of the Argentinian invasion that soldiers “went out to demand what is the motherland’s and what was usurped”.

In 1982, Argentina, led by General Leopoldo Galtieri – a leading light in its governing junta since 1976 – invaded the Falklands. The junta’s ambitious leaders gained power by coup and counter-coup, jailing and murdering political opponents.

Mario José Bergoglio was accused of turning his back on the de la Cuadra family, which lost five relatives to state terror, including Estela’s sister Elena, who was five months pregnant before she was kidnapped and killed in 1977.

The family appealed to the leader of the Jesuits in Rome, who urged Bergoglio to help them. Bergoglio then assigned a monsignor to talk with police, who said the woman, as a communist, was doomed, but she had given birth in captivity to a girl who was given to a family “too important” for the adoption to be reversed.