Today we continue with the Pope’s trip to Argentina, and we do so in Córdoba, returning to sleep in Buenos Aires. But what must be told today is yesterday’s day, the busiest of the trip: two and a half million faithful, five victims of abuse received without it being known who chose them or what cases they came from, two groups that asked to be present and were left out, and a word—war—that we have been saying for days would not appear and that does appear. It is evident that Catholicism in the Americas has Spanish roots. The city of Buenos Aires was founded in 1536 by the explorer Pedro de Mendoza and baptized as Puerto de Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Aire.
Córdoba, the FAdeA grounds and a footnote no one has cited
Today’s schedule, according to the official program: an early flight to Córdoba, Mass with homily on the esplanade of the Military Aviation School, an afternoon meeting with bishops, priests, deacons, religious men and women, seminarians and pastoral agents in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, return to Buenos Aires and a vigil with young people at the Monument to the Spaniards. In other words: tonight he returns to the same ground where he celebrated Mass yesterday.
Regarding the Córdoba stage, something needs to be clarified that the Argentine media themselves have been refining. The formula that resolves it is “the esplanade of the Military Aviation School, FAdeA grounds”: the altar is set up on land belonging to the Argentine Aircraft Factory, a state-owned company, within a complex that shares space with the military school. John Paul II celebrated there in April 1987, when the grounds were called Área Material Córdoba, and a plaque marks the site of the altar from that time. Today’s altar measures fifty meters across and bears the cross that Father Brochero commissioned for his House of Exercises, which is leaving the Villa Cura Brochero museum for the first time.
There is also a detail about the place that we have not seen in any chronicle, Argentine or Italian, and that requires separating two planes. First, what is not on record: the Military Aviation School does not appear as a clandestine detention center in the Córdoba delegation’s CONADEP report, nor among the centers of the La Perla mega-case, nor in the 2025 prosecutorial request for crimes against humanity in the province. Second, what is on record, and comes from an official publication of the Argentine State: the report Corporate Responsibility in Crimes Against Humanity places the school among the facilities “that formed part of the repressive circuit of the province of Córdoba”, documents that GMD delegate Adrián Renato Machado García was abducted on March 24, 1976, in a vehicle checkpoint in front of the school and by personnel from the school itself, and records that he was seen inside it. What we note is only this to avoid confusion; the Argentine Church’s own agency presents it as “the cradle of the Argentine Air Force.”
From ecclesiastical Córdoba, two things. The archbishop is Cardinal Ángel Sixto Rossi, a Jesuit, appointed in November 2021 when he was provincial counselor of the Society in Argentina and Uruguay. And the Pope arrives five weeks after the auxiliary bishop and vicar general of the archdiocese was removed from office: the archdiocese’s communiqué on the canonical situation of Monsignor Ricardo Seirutti states that the process was ordered by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, that it was conducted in the Interdiocesan Tribunal of Buenos Aires, that the complaints come from two adults for “conduct unbecoming of his episcopal ministry,” and that the penalties include five years without being able to receive new offices and without administering the sacrament of penance. We published it on October 3. Today he addresses the Argentine clergy in that cathedral.
Two and a half million
Yesterday’s Mass at the Monument to the Spaniards has given the figure of the trip, and the figure has no father. The Bollettino publishes two and a half million but expressly attributes them to the local authorities. ANSA attributes them to the National Police, and through the spokesperson of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, after having given the two million that the Argentine presidency had stated. AICA speaks of more than two million according to estimates by the organizers.
The Italian edition of Vatican News maintains the attribution to the local authorities; the Spanish edition loses it twice and gives the figure in its own voice: “2.5 million faithful were present.” From there comes the “according to the Vatican” with which Chilean and Argentine media have headlined, which is formally defensible—the figure is in the Bollettino—and fundamentally false, because the Holy See acts as a transmission belt and not as a source. We provide all this information to establish that we are facing the most massive event of this pontificate so far; Peru remains. When we see the Argentine Catholic people, we cannot help but point out the tremendous contrast between the enormous mass of faithful we saw yesterday and an episcopate considered among the worst in Christendom. God will reward so much sacrifice and so much fidelity.
Five victims, and those left out
The Pope’s meeting with victims of abuse has no entry in the November 9 bulletin: what there was was a note from the Sala Stampa distributed to journalists. According to that note, he received five people for more than an hour, spoke with each one separately and then greeted them as a group; he listened to “the painful stories lived” and expressed “the will to strengthen paths of protection, good, welcome and accompaniment in the Church”. What the note does not say: where it took place, what cases the five people came from, by what criterion they were chosen, nor a single phrase from the Pope in the first person. Everything being quoted as his is the wording of the note. An Argentine medium has also headlined that he committed “to advancing reparation”: the word reparation is not there.
And there is the news, given by those who did not enter. Ending Clergy Abuse has denounced that the victims of the Próvolo Institute and the forty-three women who denounced Opus Dei were left out, the two groups that had publicly asked to be received. Their lawyer, Sergio Salinas Giordano, speaks: “Our claim is against a mechanism that left the decision of whom the Pope listens to in the hands of the Argentine ecclesiastical hierarchy. That hierarchy is precisely the institution whose response to abuse is under discussion.” The objection fits with the little the Vatican note says, which attributes the selection to the fact that the victims were “presented by the local Church,” without naming any body. ECA announces that it will ask the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and the Pope himself to be informed of who chose and by what criterion. And they are careful not to pit some victims against others: “We deeply respect the five people who spoke with the Pope.”
A necessary clarification on the cases circulating associated with the day, because the boundary matters: Julio Grassi and former bishop Gustavo Zanchetta have final convictions; Próvolo is in an open criminal case; and the accusations of the forty-three women are accusations, which Opus Dei denies. The Holy See has not named any of the four. Two hours after that meeting, the Pope presided over Vespers with the entire Argentine episcopate and the synodal teams, and the published text of that homily does not mention abuse.
The pagan logic of giving to have
From the homily of the Mass, first of all, a point of origin must be retained that avoids errors: the original text is Spanish, and the Bollettino marks it as such, so the Italian circulating in the Italian press is already a Vatican translation. The Pope’s formula is “the pagan logic of ‘giving to have,’” and not “giving to receive,” which is what comes out when retro-translated from Italian. It comes within a passage on the vendors expelled from the temple: “From the beginning, humanity is tempted to bargain with God.”
The rest of the homily is familiar and is built on Ezekiel’s river and Matthew’s rock. The phrase that Argentine media have headlined is exact: “With Him and in Him every family can become a seed of authentic renewal for this country.” And the one that will be discussed is the enumeration of what families experience, which includes “precarious work” alongside lack of stability, domestic violence, separations and addictions. SIR headlines with a “no” to that pagan logic that the text does not formulate: the Pope describes it, does not prohibit it. It is the medium’s synthesis, not a quote.
Three idols that must be freed
At the Palacio San Martín, with Christian leaders and those of other religious traditions, the Pope listed three idols from which religions must free themselves: that of domination, “because we are not the God of others”; that of vainglory, “the things we possess do not make us divine”; and “the idol of war, because there is only one Lord and judge of history.” He closed with the prayer from Fratelli tutti, with its “without hunger, without poverty, without violence, without wars.” There was a rabbi and there was an imam, and the only “Israel” in the speech is that of Nostra aetate: “the spiritual bond that unites the Church with the people of Israel.”
For days we have been noting that ongoing conflicts and the word war did not appear in the speeches of this trip. The first half remains true and is the only thing we maintain: in no text of the trip is Ukraine, Gaza, Palestine, Sudan, Haiti, or the Middle East named. The second was false, and we have repeated it for several days. The word was already there on November 7 in Montevideo, at the Catholic University of Uruguay, as “the most terrible of ‘human works’”, and that same night at the Centenary vigil, in a series with death, hatred, violence and sin. What is new from yesterday is not that he said it: it is that for the first time war is a matter of the speech and not a passing mention. “Weapons” had also come out on the 8th, but in the key of criminality, in “the trafficking of weapons and drugs”.
Claypole, and the city of charity
The first visit of the morning was to the Little Cottolengo Don Orione in Claypole, and the Bollettino registers it as a greeting, not as a speech. The text is built on three evangelical cities, Bethlehem, Nazareth and Bethany, and the expression that several media have headlined is the Pope’s, although he attributes it to the founder: “Saint Luigi Orione, its founder, wanted this place to be known as the ‘city of charity.’” He thanks the words of the bishop of Lomas de Zamora, Jorge Lugones, and of the director of the house, Brother Jorge Silanes, and asks that “in Argentina a new generation of saints of charity be forged.”
What is not in the text, and is the framework in which the Argentine press had been reading this stop for weeks, is money. The choice of the Cottolengo has been interpreted there against the cut in disability, and the house drags medications that do not arrive and late payments. The Pope did not enter into that. But that the only visit of the trip to people with disabilities falls on an institution that claims from the State is not a coincidence that has escaped anyone in Buenos Aires.
Homage to Francis: a plaque, a bas-relief and a reconciliation
The homage to Francis in the metropolitan cathedral was a gesture and not a speech, and it is worth saying what it consisted of, because it has been told as if there were a tomb. According to the Bollettino, the Pope went to the back of the presbytery to lay flowers with some children before the commemorative plaque and prayed in silence. Francis is buried in Santa Maria Maggiore; in Buenos Aires what there is is a plaque with his years as archbishop and as pontiff. In the Vespers homily he named him once, and in the key of succession: the cathedral “whose cathedra our dear Pope Francis occupied before being called to shepherd the universal Church.”
The body of that homily is reconciliation, and it is anchored in the bas-relief of the cathedral itself that represents Joseph reconciling with his brothers: “Reconciliation requires recognizing wounds, renouncing resentment,” “let us guard communion, welcoming with charity our legitimate differences.” Warning for those who seek here an intervention in the divisions of the Argentine episcopate: there is none. Silere non possum, which usually reads these things in the key of factions, does not do so here and headlines the same as the text says. What he did ask for, and what will probably come up again today in Córdoba, was to work together “to promote priestly and religious vocations.”
The inverse path to Pope Francis
We spoke yesterday about Sunday’s speech at the Palacio Libertad, so today only what a comparison adds. L’Osservatore Romano headlines “Democrazia ed economia sempre al servizio della persona” and frames the piece in the invitation to guard unity. It does not name Milei in the body—his name appears only as a link label—and, above all, the passage on corruption is not there: neither in the headline nor in the text. That is, half of the speech that everyone else turned into news is what is missing in the Holy See’s newspaper. And there is a second, finer suppression: when citing the arrival it joins two clauses into one, so that it leaves the Pope saying only that he comes to the homeland where Francis began a path, and along the way the “in a certain sense I retrace the inverse path” disappears, which is precisely the phrase with which AsiaNews has headlined its chronicle. The Pope’s newspaper removes the phrase in which the Pope situates himself with respect to his predecessor.
Outside, the opposite. ANSA headlines “La lezione del Papa a Milei, ‘l’economia sia al servizio dell’uomo’”, and inside the quotation marks there are two manipulations: it changes “persona” to “uomo” and amputates the chiasmus, which is where the argument lives, because the original says “the economy must be at the service of the person, and not the person at the service of the economy.” Its subhead adds an imperative “Custodite la democrazia” that the Pope did not pronounce: the original is declarative. The body of the piece is fine; the defect is in the headline. The official Spanish says that Francis “began a history” and the Italian “ha iniziato un cammino.” Nico Spuntoni, who signs the chronicle for Il Giornale, cites the Italian, which is correct because it cites the official translation. But it is a translation.
Who appoints the representatives of pensioners
And to Rome, which does not stop. Silere non possum asks whose money the Vatican pensions are, and the piece is a good example of an article that must be read twice: everything newsworthy is anonymous and everything verifiable is true. What is anonymous is the figure, a technical imbalance of between five hundred and one thousand million euros attributed to “internal sources,” and the accusation that contributions are counted twice. Neither one nor the other can be verified, for a simple and usual reason in the Vatican: the Pension Fund does not publish accounts, and the presentation of the Holy See’s 2024 accounts does not mention it. Nor is there an official figure for the imbalance: Francis’s letter of November 2024 speaks of a “grave squilibrio prospettico” and does not give a euro.
What is verifiable, on the other hand, is the best of the article, and we have gone to look for it in the statute. The Fund’s board of directors has eleven members; four experts are appointed by the Council for the Economy, which is also, together with the Secretariat for the Economy and the General Auditor, one of the three bodies that oversee the Fund. And the two members who represent the enrolled and the pensioners, says article 6 of the current statute, are “elected and appointed by the Secretary of State.” The closing of the article—not elected by the enrolled, appointed by the Secretary of State—is literally what the norm says. To which we add a gap the article does not exploit: since November 2024 the Fund has had a single administrator, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, and the statute still published is that of 2015, which describes a council of eleven.
Zen writes on his blog and no one has read the original
Cardinal Joseph Zen, ninety-four years old, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, has written again against the Synod. InfoCatólica summarizes it as a request to the Pope for “a long vacation” for Grech and Hollerich and to replace Cardinal Fernández; the trigger is the report of Study Group 9 on sexual morality, in which he asks whether it is not blasphemy to present the homosexual act as a gift from God, and in passing maintains that no pope can govern from his tomb and that we will end up resembling the Anglicans. The Catholic Herald reads it as a request for the replacement of three cardinals.
The text is an entry on his own blog, which has migrated domains and is now at oldyosef.hkcatholic.com; we have not been able to open it. And the chain circulating is a translation of a translation: what we read in Spanish is the version from InfoCatólica, which is the one later reused by the others. The Hong Kong Court of Appeal dismissed in September his appeal against the 2022 conviction for not registering the humanitarian fund of which he was trustee, and he has announced an appeal to the higher instance. It is a registration infraction and the procedure remains open.
From undersecretary to head of dicastery in two headlines
On November 5, the Bollettino appointed two undersecretaries of the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development: the Jesuit Avelino Chicome Bundo Chico and the Chilean Claudia Leal Luna, a laywoman, doctor in Moral Theology from the Alfonsiana, professor at the John Paul II Institute and consultant to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. They cover the vacancy left by the promotion of Monsignor Jozef Barlaš to secretary. Undersecretary is the third rung of a dicastery.
LifeSiteNews headlines it as a “top post” for a feminist who supports blessings for same-sex couples, and the Italian version raises the rung to “a capo di un Dicastero”, which is already flatly false: an undersecretary is not at the head of anything. Of the two attributions, one is documented and the other is not. The feminism comes from a 2021 interview of hers whose own headline is the quote: “no one who has studied ethics can refuse feminism”.
Wrapping up the day
Two pieces from the same day discuss whether it is desirable to canonize Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, archbishop of Chicago who died in 1996, and it is worth noting what neither of the two says: there is no cause. It is not on record as opened or requested, neither in the Archdiocese of Chicago nor in the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. What there is is the thirtieth anniversary and a sequence: the October events in Trento, where his family was from, Cardinal Cupich’s conference that Vatican News published in full and, opposite, the reproduction of an accusation testimony. We recounted it on November 6. The three lines of accusation circulating are from different decades, independent of each other and none resolved judicially or canonically; fusing them into a narrative is the error made by those who recount it.
In Syracuse, New York, Bishop Douglas Lucia has relieved the pastor of All Saints, Fred Daley, seventy-nine years old, at the head of the parish since it was constituted in 2008. The faithful read it as punishment for his public profile. The diocese denies it and gives an administrative reason—that the new pastor can lead from the beginning the planned merger project—and its spokesperson, Danielle Cummings, settles it with a phrase that is worth the section: if that were the motivation, it would have happened eighteen years ago.
And tonight, on Rai 1, the second half of Livatino. Il giudice e i suoi assassini, four episodes directed by Michele Placido, his first fiction for Rai as director, with Giuseppe De Domenico in the role of the judge. Mattarella was at the October preview. Rosario Livatino was beatified as a martyr in Agrigento in May 2021.
Today, the memorial of Saint Leo the Great:
“We are unprofitable servants; we have done only what we were obliged to do.”