How is Pope Francis?
A calm, friendly, colloquial person, with a fine humor.
How is your health after your hospital operation?
A routine intervention, nothing to worry about.
Since when do you work with him?
Four years ago, he phoned me at my house in Buenos Aires, at dawn. He did it through Cardinal Wallet, who asked me a single question: "Do you want to come to Rome?"
To do what?
To connect, from the Vatican curia, with the communities of Latin America and call for conversion and to walk together.
Is it true that Protestant communities are growing in Latin America?
This is not a sports competition nor do I see any threat to Catholicism.
It is something new that the Vatican trusts a woman and laywoman.
This is an eloquent sign that Pope Francis is rooted in the world.
What did you think of his proposal?
I thought of my father, who died when I was a teenager. My father was a believer, he was a Latinist, and he dreamed of having a son and that one day he would be ordained a priest.
His father was strong...
My father was clear about it: “There is no more complete career than that!”, he maintained.
Perhaps your father dreamed of a Pope son.
"You don't have to run, life is very long," he repeated before his ambitions.
But a girl was born to him.
When he died, to pay for the studies I chose, the degrees in Philosophy and Theology, I had to start working as a seamstress... Oh, if he could see me today!
I would see him dispatching today with the Pope himself, in the Vatican curia!
I am a Doctor of Humanities and I am a Doctor of Theology. I preside over the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. And I am a member of the Pontifical Commission for Social Sciences. Oh, and also from the Pontifical ProVita Commission.
Will there be women priests one day?
This issue is of great interest here in Europe, but I assure you that it is not an issue in the rest of the world, where much more basic needs are imperative.
What is the important issue, then?
The papal encyclical Laudato sia (praise be to you) sums it up well: its social approach puts the working people at the center of everything in order to one day overcome the current crisis of civilization, which is ecological and socio-environmental.
Describe to me the silence of this crisis.
Today's world is immersed in an extractive productivity that destroys us, that is contrary to the poor and contrary to the Earth: we must attend to their cry.
Many believe that if the Vatican sold its treasures, it could distribute wealth.
Tell those many that that gaze of yours is of a capitalist nature.
Oh yeah?
Of course, the Catholic Church is not here to go around trading. What the Church does is bring beauty to the world, it is for everyone, for the soul of all humanity.
What does Catholicism think about the problem of surrogacy today?
I cannot answer that, since I am not a doctor in bioethics.
But he's on a ProVita commission...
We understand that life is the one that extends between the purpose of abortion and the purpose of euthanasia.
The entire human life.
That is, and it is up to us to organize it unionized so that it is a dignified human life. And here the role of politics comes into play, the essential and necessary role of politics.
Oh, the entanglements of politics...
It is very clear that in countries where workers are well organized in unions, fewer workers emigrate.
Is Pope Francis a Peronist?
No.
Safe?
And if it was... what's wrong with that?
Good question: would there be something wrong with that?
Whether he said that the Pope is a populist or if he said that he is not a populist, a partisan stance would emerge. And the Pope does not take partisan positions.
And why not?
Because the Pope seeks conciliation between all parties and defends the values of all workers, as established by the social doctrine of the Church.
She is a disciple of Ernesto Laclau, the inspiration for various founders of Podemos...
It's not my place to talk about this.
What slogan does the Pope give you in the Vatican?
"Either we unite or we sink." And it is true: for two thousand years it has been like this.
