In front of hundreds of faithful, Milei bowed to greet, smiling and hugging his compatriot and supreme pope in St. Peter’s Basilica after finishing the canonization Mass of Blessed María Antonia de Paz y Figueroa, known as Mama Antula (1730-1799). ) and first Argentine saint.
Milei, a far-right economist who has called this in the past fatherHe stood up as he entered the basilica in a wheelchair. During the ceremony he received communion and prayed kneeling.
It was one of the images of the day and the highlight of a hectic week for Milei, who traveled to Jerusalem, prayed emotionally at the Western Wall and experienced his first major crisis with the failure of his mega reform package, numerous insults towards his critics and even had time to write a to see a few sights in Rome before he saw this father.
“It’s a historic moment,” Mariana Accietto, an Argentinian from Córdoba who lives in Rome, told AFP. “Let’s hope that the president and the father “We want to try to improve the situation in Argentina,” the 50-year-old woman added.
First contact.
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This Sunday there was a first contact before an audience on Monday in the Vatican, where Francisco and Milei can speak in detail. On the same day, the Argentine President will meet his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
The president prepared the ground and declared on Saturday that the father “He is the most important Argentine in history” and said he hoped for “a very fruitful dialogue.”
The hearing will take place in an atmosphere charged by Milei’s previous attacks on the United States father. The leader even accused him of “political interference” during the election campaign last September.
Nevertheless, Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the new president have made peace in recent months, the first with a congratulatory phone call after winning the election in November, the second with an invitation letter to visit Argentina.
The two have very different postulates regarding the fight against poverty, a scourge that affects 40% of the population of Argentina, where inflation exceeded 200% last year.
Throughout his papacy, Francis has criticized the excesses and inequalities caused by liberalism. Milei, an ultra-liberal economist who took office on December 10 and governs as a minority, advocates privatization and deregulation policies as well as drastic cuts in public spending.
A line he has promised to maintain despite the failure of his mega package of economic and political measures called the omnibus bill in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
An upcoming visit.
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He father Francisco, a Jesuit and former archbishop of Buenos Aires, has not visited his homeland since his election as head of the Catholic Church in 2013, and his desire to do so this year will be one of the big questions facing the audience will be busy on Monday.
In an interview with Vatican News, the current Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Ignacio García Cuerva, expressed his impatience to see Francis in Argentina, whose visit is “the priest’s encounter with his people.”
Although he acknowledged political suspicions about a figure whose statements and omissions are closely followed in his country: “Sometimes we Argentines have not let Bergoglio be Francisco and have dragged him into the muck of our discussions.”
“Hopefully the president will convince him and we will do it,” Interior Minister Guillermo Francos, who is accompanying Milei on his visit to Rome and the Vatican, told Miter Radio in Argentina this year.
Jesuitism and human rights.
María Antonia de Paz y Figueroa, recently canonized after a second miracle was attributed to her, was an ordained layperson who sought to spread the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola just as the Community of Jesus was being founded the the fatherwas from King Carlos III. expelled from the territories of the Spanish crown.
Over time, she was also considered a pioneer of human rights in Argentina as she stood up for the excluded.
A very political message, because the canonization of Mama Antula, “a very courageous and courageous woman of her time,” had “a lot to do with the role of women in the Church and in society,” as she explains to AFP biographer of fatherSergio Rubin.
“He walked thousands of miles through deserts and dangerous roads to bring God. Today he is for us a model of apostolic fervor and boldness,” the priest said in his homily. fatherpraising the new saint.
SPRING: AFP