Card. Sodano and General Pinochet

Angelo Cardinal Sodano

Function: Former Secretary of State, Roman Curia

Title: Cardinal Bishop of Suburbicarian See of Ostia

Birthdate: Nov 23, 1927	Country: Italy

Elevated: Jun 28, 1991	More information: www.catholic-hierarchy.org

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Card. Sodano and General Pinochet
Sept 12, 2004
It emerged last week that the Holy See had intervened with the British Government on behalf of General Pinochet. The chairman of the Latin America Bureau in London examines the changing relationship between the Catholic Church and the Chilean regime since the coup in 1973.

(The Tablet, 27 February 1999) The Catholic Church is as divided today about General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte as it has ever been since he seized power from Chile’s elected left-wing Government on 11 September 1973.

Last week it became clear that the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, intervened last November on the general’s behalf with the British Government and with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Cardinal Sodano was on the staff of the nunciature in Santiago before, during and after Pinochet’s coup against Allende in 1973, becoming nuncio himself from 1977 to 1988. Now he wanted the general to escape extradition to Spain and be sent back to Chile. There, as the most casual political observer knows, the chances of any sort of trial are minimal, even non-existent. According to Mgr Piero Pioppo, secretary at the nunciature in Santiago, Cardinal Sodano’s intervention was the result of an appeal from the Chilean Government to the Holy See that Chile’s sovereignty in the matter of Pinochet should be respected.

Also in Chile last week, however, Bishop Carlos Camus, one of the more prominent members of the hierarchy, criticised the former dictator in the most stringent terms. He went on to criticise Pinochet’s supporters who, he said, had "deified" him. They were committing "a tremendous error", the bishop said, by turning Pinochet "into an idol who wants to occupy God’s place".

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