President Javier Milei of Argentina said he was building “a positive relationship” with Pope Francis despite previously insulting him, after they met for the first time at the canonisation of their country’s first female saint.
The two spoke briefly ahead of the canonisation service for Maria Antonia of Saint Joseph de Paz y Figueroa – known as Mama Antula – in Rome on Sunday, and then greeted and embraced each other afterwards.
They also held a private meeting on Monday, when “appreciation was expressed for the good relations between the Holy See and the Argentine Republic”, according to a Vatican statement.
It continued: “The parties then addressed the new government’s programme to counter the economic crisis.”
Milei was elected in November amid financial collapse in Argentina, on a populist “anarcho-capitalist” platform with promises to cut state spending which clergy have criticised as an attack on the poor.
In his homily at the canonisation service, the Pope condemned “fear, prejudice and false religiosity” as “leprosies of the soul” which emerge when “we withdraw from others and think only of ourselves, when we reduce the world around us to the limits of our own ‘comfort zone’, when we believe that the problem is always and only other people”.
During an earlier career as a television pundit, Milei called Pope Francis an “imbecile who defends social justice”, a “son-of-a-bitch preaching communism” and “the representative of the evil one on earth”.
However, he insisted during his presidential campaign that he had apologised for these remarks.
In an interview broadcast on Italian television on Monday, he said that he had realised Francis was “the most important Argentine in all of Argentina, the leader of all the world’s Catholics”, and so “I had to reconsider some positions”.
Having previously said he was close to converting to Judaism, Milei described himself in the interview as a Catholic who observed Jewish practices “a bit”.
Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and a fellow Argentine, said on Monday there was “no question about [Francis] having any animosity” about the insults which he understood “as a campaign strategy”.
However, Fernández seemed to dampen prospects of a papal visit to Argentina – which Milei has mentioned frequently since his election – saying it “depends on a lot of things”.
The Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Ignacio García Cuerva told Vatican News last week that Argentines “are waiting for [the Pope] and want to meet with their pastor”.
However, he said that they had been slow to appreciate his global role. Argentines “have not let Bergoglio be Francis, and have dragged him through the mud of our discussions, and have put him in the midst of our divisions”, he said.
Loading ...
