reason for “pride” and “frustration” in their homeland

On the trip between the Portene de Palermo neighborhood and the May Square, which is in front of Casa Rosada and a few steps from Buenos Aires Cathedral, the taxi driver talks about Pope Francis, even without being asked. “A lot of people talking about the Pope’s death. But, honestly, I can’t swallow the fact that he didn’t come to his country, to our country,” he said as he kept his eyes on the traffic of Avenida Corrientes.

In the cathedral, where the pontiff was the archbishop Jorge Marío Bergoglio, before taking over the Vatican, the perception was of pride and frustration. “The Pope is not just Argentine. He is a Pope from all over the world. But it is a pity that he has never come here during his papacy,” said one believer, accompanied by her husband and a small son. In the Basilica of São José de Flores, where he developed his priestly career, a crowd honored him with applause and tears.

On Monday night, outside the Mass to the pontiff, the vice president of Argentina, Victoria Villarruel, was booed and had to be escorted by security guards. The current Archbishop of Buenos Aires criticized the attitude against Villarruel. Like other Argentine politicians, she had been received by Francis in the Vatican. And there in the neighborhood of Flores, where the Pope lived and was his neighborhood in Buenos Aires, also regretted that he did not visit the country while he was a pontiff.

The feeling has been shared by other Argentines who had expected the Pontiff’s visit since his Vatican inauguration on March 13, 2013. His first trip, after taking over the papacy, went to Brazil, a country that he knew for his history, for the religious with whom he felt affinity for principles and spirituality, such as Frei Betto, by Presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Roussef, who visited them in the Vatican and the Vatican increased polarization in recent years. “The Pope even flyed over Argentina and still did not visit us,” complained the box of a supermarket.

In May Square, on Monday (21), tourist groups took pictures with Casa Rosada and the flag in half mast in the background. Argentine president Javier Milei decreed seven days of mourning for the death of former Buenos Aires Cardeal, Jorge Marío Bergoglio, Pope Francis. In the presidency campaign, Milei had defined the Pope as “an asshole” and “representative of evil on earth.”

He then argued that the pontiff was a defender of communism. The Pope embodied the flags that Milei publicly rejects – for example, social justice, the presence of the state and the concern for the environment. But in a turn in his perception of the Argentine Pope, I mailed him at the Vatican, months after taking office at Casa Rosada and will embark on Thursday to Rome to participate in the ceremony of goodbye to the Pontiff, along with other world leaders-among them, Lula, Brazil, and Donald Trump, from the United States.

According to the perception of Argentine analysts, it was for the political division in the country that Francisco, who died at the age of 88 on Easter Monday, did not visit Argentina in his 12 years of papacy. At the Vatican, he received all the presidents of the country during this period – Cristina Kirchner, Mauricio Macri, Alberto Fernández and Milei.

With Cristina met several times and with Macri (as with Trump) did not disguise, in the photo, the distancing, with the expression of few friends. Lover of Tango, admirer of writer Jorge Luis Borges and practitioner of Austere Life, Bergoglio was proud to have studied in Argentine public education. And he said he was “totally Argentine.” But political divisions (which in Argentina call “griete”) may have been the reason for not visiting their homeland, although he is always informed about daily life and the direction of his country.