Cardinal who pushed Bush to avert US-Iraq war dies By NICOLE WINFIELD, AP
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http://news.aol.com/article/cardinal-who-pushed-bush-to-avert-us/301398?flv=1________________________________________________________________________
http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/region/news/arc/lasnet/1995/0470.htmlArgentina: Catholic Church's Role in Mass Murder, Torture
David Sangurima (sangu@igc.apc.org)
Thu, 25 May 1995 10:10:15 -0500
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/* Written 6:15 PM May 24, 1995 by rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu in igc:misc.activism. */
/* ---------- "Argentina: Catholic Church's Role i" ---------- */
/** pacnews.sample: 307.0 **/
** Topic: Church's Role in Argentinean Deaths **
** Written 11:45 AM May 24, 1995 by pacificnews in cdp:pacnews.sample **
From: Pacific News Service <pacificnews>
/* Written 1:55 PM Apr 25, 1995 by pacificnews in igc:pacnews.storie */
/* ---------- "Church's Role in Argentinean Deaths" ---------- */
COPYRIGHT PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
450 Mission Street, Room 204
San Francisco, CA 94105
415-243-4364
NEWS ANALYSIS-785 WORDS
THE SILENCE OF THE BISHOPS -- PRIEST SCORES CHURCH'S ROLE IN ARGENTINA'S
DIRTY WARS
EDITOR'S NOTE: As Argentina grapples with the confessions of ex-military
members about their involvement in its dirty wars, revelations by a
Catholic priest are focusing new attention on the Church's role. PNS
correspondent Uki Goni is a freelance journalist based in Buenos Aires.
BY UKI GONI, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
BUENOS AIRES -- The Vatican Embassy here kept a secret list of thousands
of people who "disappeared" during Argentina's dirty wars of the late
1970s which it failed to make public at the time and may have since
destroyed, according to Church sources. The revelations have stirred
heated debate about the Church's role in the kidnap, torture and murder
of some 15,000 people even as the nation grapples with the confessions of
ex-military members about their involvement in the killings.
Italian Cardinal Pio Laghi, who was Papal Pro-Nuncio in Buenos Aires
during the military dictatorship and later served as Pro-Nuncio in the
United States, confirmed last week that he knew of some 6,000 cases of
people who "disappeared."
Now based in Rome, the Cardinal made his admission in an interview with
an Argentinean magazine following claims by Father Federico Richards, a
Catholic priest at the Church of the Holy Cross, that Pio Laghi kept one
list at his office while a second was kept at the office of the Military
Vicarate. Richards, a 73-year-old third generation Argentinian of Irish
descent who speaks English with a thick Irish brogue, wants the church to
explain why it never made the lists public and what has happened to them.
In the 1970s Father Richards was the editor of "The Southern Cross," an
English-language newspaper serving the 500,000-member Irish community in
Argentina. The paper published reports of the "disappearances" as they
happened while the local Spanish-language press in Argentina maintained
total silence.
As a member of the Passionists Order, Father Richards says he had pledged
to keep alive the memory of Christ's suffering. Outside his church a sign
reads: "Solidarity with the crucified of today."
Father Richards clearly recalls the two occasions when he consulted the
"lists" of the Pope's ambassador and of the Argentine Catholic Church. "A
niece of mine, Gloria Keogh, was kidnapped on the night of June 15, 1978,
in her apartment and disappeared. She was 21 years old and a writer who a
few days before had published her first book of short stories. I went
with her father to seek the help of the office of Papal Nuncio Pio Laghi."
Richards discovered a macabre system at the Vatican Embassy by which
Argentina's military rulers constantly updated a list of the dead and
missing kept by Pio Laghi. "The Nuncio's secretary was an Irish priest,
Kevin Mullen. He told us that the Vatican Embassy used to periodically
send a list up to the Ministry of the Interior of people whom they knew
had disappeared, requesting news or information about them." Mullen told
Father Richards that according to the wording of the replies, Pio Laghi's
office knew who was dead or alive.
Pio Lagahi claims his silence about the list enabled him to save the
lives of several influential Argentines. But even the relatives of some
of those he tried to save now condemn him for withholding information
that could have prevented the disappearance of thousands of others.
Richards discovered a second list of 2,100 "disappeareds" kept by
Argentine Bishop Adolfo Tortolo, Argentina's Vicar of the Armed Forces.
"Bishop Tortolo, who always had an excuse for everything the military
did, passed us to his secretary, Monsignor Grasselli, who showed us
stacks of letters on his desk from people asking for information about
their missing relatives. Grasselli's list included some 2,100 people,
some with a cross by their names meaning that they had been confirmed
dead."
Father Richards notes that neither the Papal Nuncio's office nor the
Military Vicarate could inform him of the fate of his niece, who remains
missing to this day.
In an editorial written at the time entitled "The Silence of the
Bishops," Father Richards condemned the hierarchy of the Argentine
Catholic Church for not speaking out against the excesses of the military
government. While the editorial prompted an enraged rebuke from
Argentina's Cardinal-Primate, the U.S. prelate who headed Richards' order
at the time congratulated him for his bravery. Richards and members of
another Irish parish active in human rights, St. Patrick's, credit their
ties to the Irish orders with having prevented Argentina's hardline
bishops from silencing them.
In 1976, three Pallatine priests and two seminarians were shot to death
by military security forces at Saint Patrick's. The following year 12
founding members of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (the group representing
the thousands of mothers of the "disappeared") and a French nun who
worked alongside them were kidnapped in the front yard of the Church of
the Holy Cross, a kidnapping which was witnessed by Father Richards. Both
these attacks remain unresolved by Argentina's courts.
(04251995) **** END **** (c) COPYRIGHT PNS
** End of text from cdp:pacnews.sample **
___________________________________________________________________
The mass murder torture etc. mentioned in the above article is that which was caused by Heinz Kissinger and his Judaic-U.S. murder machine in South America for the ends of Antichrist Yisrael.