Priest absolves Pope in kidnap

A Jesuit priest kidnapped by the Argentine junta in the 1970s has said he and a fellow cleric weren’t denounced by the future Pope Francis, then leader of Argentina’s Jesuits. The Rev. Francisco Jalics said he was following up on comments about the case because he had received “some commentaries imply the opposite of what I meant.” The other priest was Orlando Yorio.

Jorge Bergoglio, now the pontiff, has said he told the priests to give up their work in slums for their own safety, and they refused. Yorio, who is now dead, later accused Bergoglio of effectively delivering them to the death squads by declining to publicly endorse their work.