Argentina's military concordats created state-funded chaplaincies which helped consolidate the power of the dictatorship. New evidence has come to light about the chaplains' role during the Argentine junta's reign of terror from 1976 to 1983. Chaplains in the police and the military reassured those who were haunted by the screams of the people they abducted, tortured and murdered — and helped them carry on.
In 2005 the Argentine military bishop attacked AIDS prevention by the democratic government, while appearing to make light of the death squads of the former military junta. This revealing remark has made it politically possible for President Nestor Kirchner to threaten to cancel a concordat — the “international treaty” which let the Vatican appoint this military bishop — although it is the taxpayers who provide the bishop’s salary.
This concordat established a military chaplaincy which helped to consolidate Church influence in the military government after the 1955 coup. It also entrenched the junta by helping to create a closed confessional loop. Military chaplains were given jurisdiction over everyone connected with the military, which really meant everyone likely to have reliable information about the military policy of abduction, torture and murder during the 1976–1983 “Dirty War”. This removed the danger of military personnel confessing their sins to outside priests.
On 29 June 1966 General Juan Carlos Onganía ditched democracy, on 29 July he had the police terrorise the University of Buenos Aires and on 10 October he gave Argentina this concordat. Paul VI hailed this pact with a military dictator as “the first fruit in the field of Church-state relations of the Ecumenical Council Vatican II.”*This concordat needed no separate ratification.
