Fresh Wikileaks reveal Vatican called reports of Pinochet’s killings ‘propaganda’
Fresh Wikileaks reveal Vatican called reports of Pinochet’s killings ‘propaganda’
By Agence France-Presse
Monday, April 8, 2013 8:55 EDT
ROME — The Vatican once dismissed reports of massacres by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as “Communist propaganda”, according to US diplomatic and intelligence documents from the 1970s leaked on Monday.
One cable dated October 18, 1973 sent to Washington by the US embassy to the Holy See relayed a conversation with the Vatican’s then deputy Secretary of State, Giovanni Benelli, the leak by whistleblowing website WikiLeaks showed.
Benelli expressed “his and the pope’s grave concern over successful international leftist campaign to misconstrue completely realities of Chilean situation,” read the cable to then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
“Benelli labelled exaggerated coverage of events as possibly greatest success of Communist propaganda,” it said, adding that the Italian monsignor said this showed “how Communists can influence free world media in future”.
More: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/08/fresh-wikileaks-reveal-vatican-called-reports-of-pinochets-killings-propaganda/
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who actually worked with the Dirty War military dictatorship while it tortured, and murdered political prisoners, forced delivery or gave C-sections to pregnant political prisoners, took the babies, gave them out like candy to preferred dictatorship military officials, or supporters, then took the women, chained them together, and threw them out of airplanes into the ocean, rivers, whatever was available. Sometimes they missed and the people fell on the land.
Here's a notable example of these monsters:
~snip~
Argentina's disappeared: Father Christian, the priest who did the devil's work
Christian Von Wernich's story is one of the darkest chapters of the 'Dirty War'. He was the priest who heard the confessions of political prisoners, passed them on to the police, and then stood by as the detainees were tortured# David Usborne reports on the day justice was done #/i#
Published: 11 October 2007
Outside the courthouse in La Plata, 50 miles south of Buenos Aires, late on Tuesday, the crowds were ready for what they were sure was coming# Finally, the word leaked that a verdict had been handed down – and it was the right one# They beat their drums, women undid white headscarves and raised them in the air, fireworks were lit and somewhere in the midst of the throng a human effigy was set alight#
It was an extraordinary explosion of emotion, replicated in cafes and homes across the land at the end of a televised trial that had lasted three months and gripped the entire population# But if there was joy, even relief in Argentina yesterday, its feelings remained far more complicated# This conviction was a moment of cleansing and resolution# But it also was a reminder of deep, incomprehensible pain#
The effigy of cardboard and cloth was in the likeness of the man convicted – in a dog collar of the Catholic Church# The Reverend Christian von Wernich, 69, a former police chaplain, was sentenced to life in prison for collaborating with the Buenos Aires police during the dark days of the country's "Dirty War", when, between 1976 and 1983, the military ran the country in a cruel and ruthless dictatorship#
Von Wernich, wearing a bullet-proof vest, who had compared himself to Jesus Christ in his testimony before a three-judge panel, was found guilty of involvement in seven murders, as well as 31 cases of torture and 42 kidnappings# He had participated, prosecutors said, in crimes that amounted to "genocide"# Von Wernich told the court he had been doing "God's work"#
More:
http://election#democraticunderground#com/discuss/duboard#php?az=view_all&address=102x3024674
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Christian Von Wernich[/center]
