Card. Quarracino and Bishop Bergoglio

Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, born in the small Southern Italian village of Pollica and ordained priest in Buenos Aires on 22 December 1945, was the man who ordained Bishop another high clergy of Italian descent, Pope Bergoglio. Educated under the wings of John XXIII, Quarracino is known for some original stances . About the remarried divorced, he said that "half of the marriages is null, because they are not celebrated with the necessary maturity and awareness to commit for life, but instead out of social duty”. He also wrote for the Osservatore Romano a lofty dissertation on Latin American theology of liberation, stating that in Argentina it was noy based on a Marxist analysis of society, but rather on a social-cultural approach. 

From a doctrinal point of view, he appears to have brought to Argentina the wave of novelty that the Concilio Vaticano II represented for the Roman Catholic Church. Within this context certain antiSemitic statements of preceding Catholic doctrine were abandoned, and this is why Quarracino is known to the majority of youths who watch YouTube for a video where cardinal Bergoglio honours him while praying for the Jews in the Cathedral of Buenos Aires. 

Here Card. Quarracino in fact had created the only momument in honour of the Jews placed inside a Catholic Church and he always showed the deepest respect towards Israelites. This is the origin of the teaching that Pope Francesco learnt for himself when he was priest and then Bishop and Cardinal in Buenos Aires, and of his respect towards the Jewish world. 

On 4 September 2013 the Pope answered the questions of secular pundit Eugenio Scalfari on the relations between the Church and the Jews and their meaning for the current Catholic church. Among else, he defined the Jews as the "holy root from which Jesus originates". 


Pope Francis underlined that this evolution of Christian thought had started in Argentina, especially thanks to the commitment of Cardinal Quarracino, who acted following the impulse of Pope Roncalli, who is now "shortlisted" to become a Righteous.