Argentina govt wanted to cut my head off: Pope Francis makes BIG revelation

During his visit, a Hungarian member of the Jesuits religious order asked him about his relationship with the late Father Frenc Jalics, a Hungarian-born Jesuit who did social work in a Buenos Aires shantytown and was arrested by the military on suspicion of helping leftist guerrillas.

Pope Francis has made a big revelation that when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires more than a decade ago, the Argentine government wanted to cut his head off by backing false accusations that he had collaborated with the military dictatorship of the 1970s.

It is reportedly said that the Pope made these comments on April 29 in a private conversation with Jesuits while he was visiting Hungary. Pope Francis is also a Jesuit, and the comments were published on Tuesday in the Italian Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica, as is customary after such meetings.

During his visit, a Hungarian member of the Jesuits religious order asked him about his relationship with the late Father Frenc Jalics, a Hungarian-born Jesuit who did social work in a Buenos Aires shantytown and was arrested by the military on suspicion of helping leftist guerrillas.

In 1976, Jalics was arrested along with another Jesuit priest, Orlando Yorio, a Uruguayan. Yorio died in 2000 and Jalics died in 2021.

When Francis was elected pope in 2013, an Argentine journalist accused Francis of having betrayed the two priests when he was Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the superior of Argentine Jesuits during the military's "dirty war" against leftists.

"The situation (during the dictatorship) was really very confused and uncertain. Then the legend developed that I had handed them over to be imprisoned," Francis said.

Francis has always denied this and when he was elected pope, Jalics issued a statement saying the arrest was not the future pope's fault.

"Some people in the government wanted to 'cut off my head' ... (but) in the end my innocence was established," Francis said.

The pope did not elaborate, but he had a contentious relationship with Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's administration while serving as archbishop of Buenos Aires from 2007 to 2015.