Silent, but Active.

“Like many Argentines, Bergoglio ‘remained silent in the face of atrocity,’ but he was determined to thwart the death squads when he could, said Larraquy, who runs investigations for the Argentine newspaper Clarin. ‘He used back channels, did not complain in public and, meanwhile, he was saving people who sought refuge in the Colegio.'”

AP’s Debora Rey delves into the quiet heroism of Pope Francis during Argentina’s Dirty War. “Critics have argued that Bergoglio’s public silence in the face of that repression made him complicit, too…But the chilling accounts of survivors who credit Bergoglio with saving their lives are hard to deny. They say he conspired right under the soldiers’ noses at the theological seminary he directed, providing refuge and safe passage to dozens of priests, seminarians and political dissidents marked for elimination by the 1976-1983 military regime.”

After the Hitler youth of “God’s Rottweiler”, I presumed the worst when I’d originally heard of the new Pope’s silence during the Dirty War. Having come to think much more of him over his first year as head of the Church, I’m glad to read this.