Pope Francis says he plans to visit Argentina next year
ROME – An Argentinian journalist who recently met with Pope Francis has said the pope plans to return to his native country next year, and that the pontiff again came to the defense of his predecessor, Saint John Paul II, in light of recent allegations from a former Italian mobster.
Speaking to Argentine journalist Joaquín Morales Solá, whom he has known for years, in a private audience at his Vatican residence several days ago, the pope spoke of visiting Argentina, saying, “I want to go to the country next year.”
Francis, who has repeatedly insisted that he does not want a return visit to Argentina to be manipulated by a political agenda or twisted to support any political party, apparently told Solá that there are no elections scheduled in Argentina for 2024, so he would be free to visit while avoiding any political or partisan connotation.
“It is ten years that I am outside of the country. I don’t have the pulse of what is happening in Argentina,” he said, saying that in this context, it would be “unfair” if he had political “sympathies or antipathies.”
Elected in 2013, Pope Francis has yet to return to his native country as pope, and his failure to do so has left a bad taste in the mouth for many of his fellow countrymen, many of whom are angry and have become critical of him for keeping his home country at arm’s length for so long.
Pope Francis has said in previous interviews that he had planned to visit Argentina in 2017 during a trip that would also take him to Chile and Uruguay, however, Chile’s president at the time, Michelle Bachelet, asked him to postpone the trip until after the country’s presidential elections that year.
As a result, Francis said the trip was rescheduled at a time when he was unable to make the stop in Argentina, so in the end he only visited Chile and Peru, leaving Argentina and Uruguay for another time
In his conversation with Solá, which the journalist published bits of in Argentinian newspaper La Nación on Sunday, the pope also spoke of the church in Argentina and the fact that he will soon name a new archbishop for Buenos Aires.
As the former archbishop of Buenos Aires himself, Francis has a vested interested in who gets the position, and has maintained a close relationship to the city’s current archbishop, Cardinal Marco Poli, who was one of the pope’s first appointments and who turned 75 last year, meaning he has reached the mandatory age of retirement for cardinals and bishops.
Though he did not give names, Pope Francis said “there are three strong candidates” to take over for Poli.
“I cannot name anyone because only one will be designated. I must take into consideration the opinion of the Vatican institutions and of the cardinals who are in charge of those institutions,” he said, likely referring to the suggestions made by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops. “It’s not just a personal decision.”
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