Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, never visited his birthplace Argentina in the 12 years of his papacy, a situation Argentine media attributed in part to tense relations with the various presidents in power during that time.
Pope Francis, who was 88 at the time of his death, served as Archbishop of Buenos Aires until his election as pope in March 2013. At the time, Archbishop Bergoglio traveled to the Vatican to participate in that year’s papal conclave that resulted in his election as pope.
Argentine outlets cited logistical difficulties, the political rift in Argentina, and concerns about being “used politically” as the main reasons that the late pope avoided visiting his homeland despite expressing his desire to visit Argentina throughout his papacy.
According to the Argentine newspaper La Nación, the closest that a prospective Pope Francis visit to Argentina came to materializing was in 2017 during the administration of former Argentina President Mauricio Macri, whom the pope “did not get along with.”
The prospective 2017 trip originally involved a visit to Chile and Argentina at the end of the year, before Chile’s 2017 presidential elections. La Nación detailed that Chile held its elections in December, with the late Pope once asserting, “In January, not even the parrot is present in Argentina,” referencing the fact that Argentina, being a Southern Hemisphere nation, is in the midst of summer in that month. Pope Francis visited Chile and Peru in January 2018.
In a 2023 interview with La Nación on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his papacy, Pope Francis confirmed that a visit to Argentina had been planned for late 2017, but that Chile held presidential elections at the time, pushing the visit for after the elections. The late pope further explained that Argentina was left for later, but that things got “complicated in other ways,” such as the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
“The trip to Argentina was planned. In ’17 and all. What happened? That [former Chilean President Michelle] Bachelet, just at that time, was in the elections for her successor. So it had to be thrown forward. And I would have gone to Argentina in January or the end of December, which is not impossible, and to Uruguay,” Pope Francis said.
“Then, after Chile, I went to Peru and left Argentina for later. In other words, there is no refusal there. It was planned. Afterwards, what happened is that things got complicated in a different way. There were two years of pandemic that threw forward trips that had to be made necessarily, even places that one said, what was the point of going there? You had to go, didn’t you? So Argentina is still waiting. I want to go, I hope to go. I hope I can,” he added.
Although he did not return to Argentina, Pope Francis held several meetings with the nation’s heads of state at the Vatican throughout his papacy, meeting with former Presidents Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Mauricio Macri, and Alberto Fernández.
Pope Francis also met with current President Javier Milei, who had a highly confrontational relationship with the pope prior to becoming President over the pope’s alleged defense of “social justice.” Milei ultimately apologized to the pope in October 2023 and held a “pleasant” telephone conversation with the pontiff after Milei was elected president in November 2023. Milei formally invited Pope Francis to visit Argentina shortly before meeting him in person at the Vatican in February 2024.
Days later, Pope Francis expressed to Italian outlets his intention to visit Argentina at some point during the second half of 2024.
“The political climate in Argentina did not contribute to generate a scenario that would facilitate a trip by the Pope and there are those who understand that a visit by the Pope, in a political context shaken by poverty and social debts, would have inevitably led to papal messages of strong social content, which would have annoyed the governments in power,” La Nación asserted.
La Nación pointed out that socialist former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s September 2014 visit to the Vatican generated “strong displeasure” in the Holy See due to the “noisy presence” of members of La Cámpora, a leftist youth organization led by Fernández de Kirchner’s son Maximo Kirchner that accompanied the socialist former president at the time.
The outlet further claimed that Argentine politics played a “dirty trick” on the late pope during his first overseas trip, when he visited Rio de Janeiro in July 2013. At the time, Fernández de Kirchner’s government sent Kirchnerist candidate Martín Insaurralde to the Vatican with the intention to gaining an electoral advantage for the upcoming midterms. Insaurralde took a photo with the pope, which the candidate then reportedly used briefly on his website before it was taken down.
The Argentine outlet Infobae asserted on Monday that Pope Francis had a “zigzag” personal and political relation with Fernández de Kirchner, whose late husband, former President Néstor Kirchner, allegedly ordered an operation against him to block his prospective nomination after the death of Pope John Paul II.
According to Infobae, Pope Francis never got along with former President Mauricio Macri due to their political and ideological differences, leading to a “cold and distant” first encounter on October 16 that only lasted 22 minutes.
When it came to socialist former President Alberto Fernández, Infobae stated that Fernández and the pope “knew each other very well and had personal trust” until Fernández “betrayed his word” by endorsing and signing a 2020 law that legalized abortion in Argentina.
“Alberto Fernández pushed the Abortion law in Congress, and Francis never exonerated him,” Infobae stated.
Argentine government sources confirmed to La Nación on Tuesday morning that President Javier Milei will travel with a small entourage on Thursday night to Rome to attend Pope Francis’s funeral proceedings on Saturday.
Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana were the six South American nations that Pope Francis did not visit during his papacy. Pope Francis last visited Latin America in 2019 in an eight-day visit to Panama.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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