Pope Francis has delivered his first Sunday prayer to a cheering, laughing crowd of about 300,000 people in St Peter's Square, amid hopes that his down-to-earth style will usher in a change in the Vatican.But while many in Rome were looking forward, accusers in his native Argentina continued to raise awkward questions about the past and reproduced a document suggesting the Jesuit may have betrayed two of his priests to the murderous military dictatorship in the 1970s.The sharply different perspectives Read more [...]

Another clergy member offered biblical justification for the military’s death flights, according to an account by one of the pilots anguished about dumping drugged prisoners out of aircraft and into the sea. As he starts his papacy, Francis, until this month Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, faces his own entanglement with the Dirty War, which unfolded from 1976 to 1983. As the leader of Argentina’s Jesuits for part of that time, he has repeatedly had to dispute Read more [...]

His death was announced by the government-run news agency Télam. His son José Martínez de Hoz said Mr. Martínez de Hoz had been ill and had probably died of a heart attack. Mr. Martínez de Hoz, a former law professor, was in charge of Argentina’s economy from 1976 to 1981. Initially, he was praised by international bankers, including David Rockefeller, for his free-market policies, designed to combat Argentina’s hyperinflation, but was condemned by Argentine businessmen for the Read more [...]