Tomás Ó Flatharta

(UPDATED 20:58 EST)

Looks like Mother Church has screwed up big time. Hardly had the words “Habemus Papem” been uttered from the balcony above Vatican Square before Argentinian journalists were linking the new Pope, Francis 1, aka former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, to the Argentinian Generals’ dirty war against various leftists, liberals and anti-government activists during the 1970’s.

That war embraced torture, kidnapping, murder, the abduction and selling of children and, of course, the disappearing of opponents, the latter being something that the people of Ireland are not unfamiliar with. Thirty thousand people were “disappeared” by the junta – the so-called Desaparecidos – and their plight made the Troubles in Ireland look like a pillow fight at Harry Potter’s boarding school.

Those were the days when the Jesuits were more likely to be preaching the essential Christianity of liberation theology to the poor in places like Latin America than running…