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ARGENTINA:
Despite Vatican,
President Sacks Controversial
Military Bishop
Marcela
Valente
BUENOS AIRES, (IPS) - In a
decision running counter to the
position taken by the Vatican,
Argentine President Néstor
Kirchner on Friday sacked the
country's military bishop, who
had quipped that the health
minister should be "thrown into
the sea" because he is in favour
of decriminalising abortion.
After the government's
diplomatic efforts to get the
Vatican to remove Bishop Antonio
Baseotto from his post, the
president signed a decree in
which he withdrew his support
from the 2002 agreement that the
Argentine government signed in
2002 when the bishop was
appointed by the Vatican.
Kirchner also issued a second
decree depriving the bishop of
the government funds assigned to
the military vicariate, which
received 20,000 pesos a month
(around 6,000 dollars), of which
5,000 pesos (1,700 dollars) went
to the bishop.
Kirchner's cabinet chief Alberto
Fernández announced the
government's decision in a news
briefing alongside Foreign
Minister Rafael Bielsa and the
Secretary of Religion Guillermo
Olivieri.
Bielsa, who failed in his
attempt to get the Vatican to
remove Baseotto, reported that
the government is now waiting
for the Catholic Church to
assign a new army bishop.
Fernández said the government's
decision "does not imply
entering into any kind of
debate, dispute or confrontation
with the Church," and likened
the bishop's dismissal to that
of any official who makes
controversial remarks.
But in this case, the Vatican
had actually confirmed the
bishop in his post on Monday.
The military vicariate was
created in 1957 by a military
government and was promoted to
the rank of a bishopric in 1992
by then president Carlos Menem
(1989-1999), who granted the
bishop in charge of the
institution the salary of an
under-secretary of state.
Since then, the Vatican has
proposed a candidate for the
post, who is then approved by
the government.
Baseotto has a long history of
anti-Semitic and McCarthyist
remarks, as well as statements
justifying the gross human
rights violations committed by
the country's last military
dictatorship (1976-1983).
But a major controversy broke
out in late February, when he
lashed out against Health
Minister Ginés González García.
At that time the minister, who
is in favour of the distribution
of free condoms and the
decriminalisation of abortion,
became the target of an outburst
by the bishop, who in a
reference to a biblical passage
said he should be "thrown into
the sea headfirst with a large
millstone around his neck."
His remark had an especially
strong impact in Argentina,
where the security forces
actually dumped political
prisoners alive into the sea
from military aircraft during
the dictatorship.
Past statements by Baseotto have
also included anti-Semitic
references.
In 1986, when he was a priest in
the northern province of
Santiago del Estero, he said on
a local TV programme that "if
pornography is good business,
Hebrews will sell pornography.
If drugs are good business, they
will sell drugs. If they can get
more money by blackmailing, they
will blackmail, and if they have
to destroy their competition,
they will do so."
Although the local Jewish
community expressed its outrage
at the time, Baseotto received
support and was kept in his
post.
More recently, the bishop stated
in an argument against abortion
(which is illegal in Argentina)
that "we cross ourselves for the
victims of the Nazis. And
(killing) the unborn? Is that
not an abominable crime?"
In a somewhat similar reference
involving the dictatorship's
victims of forced disappearance
(who number around 30,000),
Baseotto said the "disappeared"
have "more defenders" than the
unborn.
He has also justified the human
rights violations by the de
facto regime as "excesses that
are impossible to avoid in a
war."
Argentina's Jewish community,
the largest in Latin America,
has been applying pressure for
Baseotto to be removed from his
post, a demand that was
reiterated Thursday by Carlos
Susevich, the father of one of
the 29 victims of a 1992 bomb
attack on the Israeli Embassy in
Buenos Aires.
Human rights groups have also
complained about Baseotto, and
have pointed out that his
secretary, Catholic priest
Alberto Zanchetta, served as
chaplain in 1977 in the Navy
School of Mechanics, the
dictatorship's biggest
clandestine detention and
torture centre.
Mabel Gutierrez with the rights
group Families of the Political
Detained/Disappeared told IPS
that "something had to be done
about this official who was
inciting crime."
"For us it invokes an image with
tragic connotations, because our
loved ones were in fact thrown
into the sea," she added.
Three weeks after the Kirchner
administration asked the Vatican
to dismiss Baseotto, Apostolic
Nuncio Adriano Bernardini told
Defence Minister José Pampuro
Monday that he found no grounds
in canonic law to remove the
bishop from his post.
But the Argentine bishops'
conference was upset because the
Vatican official had backed
Baseotto without conferring with
the local Church hierarchy.
After meeting with the defence
minister, the nuncio took part
in two days of deliberations by
the local bishops, without
mentioning that he had already
given his support to the
controversial bishop.
Nevertheless, the bishops have
not made any statement on
Baseotto's remarks. The
Argentine Church is staunchly
opposed to legalising abortion,
which is the top cause of
maternal mortality in this South
American country of 37 million. |
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