Benedict’s faith enriched Church says new pontiff

Francis offered the respects during an audience with the cardinals who elected him to succeed Benedict, whose resignation set in motion the extraordinary conclave that brought the first prelate from the New World and first Jesuit to the papacy.

Speaking at times off the cuff, Francis said Benedict had “lit a flame in the depths of our hearts that will continue to burn because it is fuelled by his prayers that will support the church on its missionary path”.

Francis, 76, tripped when he greeted the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, at the start of the audience, but he recovered immediately.

The new pope has said he wants to visit Benedict at the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, where he has been living since he resigned on February 28, becoming the first pope in 600 years to step down. No date has been set for the visit.

Francis is due to be installed as pope officially on Tuesday.

In his remarks, Francis also noted that a good half of the cardinals in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace were elderly, and he urged them to share the wisdom of their years with the young.

“Let us give this wisdom to young people; like good wine, it becomes better with age,” he said. “Let us give to young people the wisdom of life.”

A Jesuit priest whose kidnapping by the Argentine military junta decades ago led to strong criticism of the newly elected pope said yesterday that he and the pontiff have reconciled.

The Rev Francisco Jalics, who now lives in a monastery in southern Germany, said in a statement that he had talked to the Rev Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was named Pope Francis on Wednesday, long after the 1976 kidnapping of himself and fellow slum priest Orlando Yorio.

Bergoglio has said he told 
the priests to give up their slum work for their own safety, and they refused. Father Yorio, who 
is now dead, later accused Bergoglio of effectively delivering them to the death squads by declining to publicly endorse their work.

“It was only years later that we had the opportunity to talk with Father Bergoglio ... to discuss the events,” Father Jalics said yesterday in his first known comments about the kidnapping, which occurred when the new pope was the leader of Argentina’s Jesuits.

“Following that, we celebrated Mass publicly together and hugged solemnly. I am reconciled to the events and consider the matter to be closed,” he said.

Nobody disputes that Bergoglio, like most other Argentines, failed to openly confront Argentina’s 1976-1983 military junta as it kidnapped and killed thousands of people in a so-called “dirty war” to eliminate leftist opponents.

But opinions differ on how much responsibility the new pope personally deserves for the Argentine Catholic Church’s dark history of supporting the murderous dictatorship.

As the military junta took over in 1976, Bergoglio withdrew his support for the two slum priests, whose activist colleagues in the liberation theology movement were disappearing. The priests were then kidnapped and tortured at the Navy Mechanics School, which the junta used as a secret prison.

The new pope’s authorised biographer, Sergio Rubin, argues that the Catholic Church in general failed to confront the junta, and Argentine human rights activists have noted that Bergoglio never collaborated with the dictatorship.

Jalics, in his mid-80s, is out of Germany and could not be reached for comment beyond the statement. But Thomas Busch, a spokesman for the Jesuits in Munich, said the conversation between Jalics and Bergoglio took place in the year 2000.

In his statement, posted on the German Jesuits’ website, Jalics did not elaborate on what the two talked about regarding the kidnapping.

But he added: “I wish Pope Francis God’s rich blessings for his office.”