Carmen Álvarez Cuadrado
When Pope Francis was asked about a trip to Argentina, this is how he responded:
POPE FRANCIS
I always respond a bit ironically. I was in Argentina for 76 years, isn't that enough?
ELISABETTA PIQUÉ
Correspondent for 'La Nación' (Argentina)
He used to say, “well, they had me here for 76 years. Now I have to be the pastor of the world.” So, that stayed with him. He knew a lot of people had hoped he would make that trip.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio left his native Argentina in March 2013. Within days, he life changed forever. He entered the Sistine Chapel wearing red and, just hours later, walked out wearing white as Pope Francis.
During his 12 years as pope, he made 47 international trips, visiting 66 countries. Nearly a dozen were in Latin America. He traveled to most of the countries bordering Argentina: Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil.
But he never returned to Buenos Aires, a city that he saw in its infancy. He never took the bus again or returned to his old room where he spent many hours.
Many people had hoped to see him return there as a pope, where he had once preached as their own shepherd.
ELISABETTA PIQUÉ
Correspondent for 'La Nación' (Argentina)
I think it was the one thing he left undone. He was a Jesuit pope who believed in cardiognosis, the idea that your heart tells you what you have to do. And by 'heart,' I mean his deepest instinct. Because we know that when he wanted to do something, he did it.
Yet, it raises the question: why did Bergoglio not return to Argentina?
Pope Francis was concerned that the pope's image could be used for political purposes. He said so openly in a 2015 interview with Televisa.
I have to be honest. Sometimes, I have felt used for political purposes in my own country.
ELISABETTA PIQUÉ
Correspondent for 'La Nación' (Argentina)
He faced that from the start, from both sides. They called him the Kirchnerite pope, others the Peronist pope, or the pope who didn't smile at Macri. There was clear political manipulation.
Politics wasn't the only reason. Pope Francis also said that he wanted to give priority to countries on the periphery. Smaller nations or places that had never before received a papal visit.
There were also scheduling issues, as the pope stated.
POPE FRANCIS
There's one thing I don't know why nobody mentions. A trip to Argentina has been planned for November 2017.
That visit was canceled because the Holy See avoids having a pope travel during the election campaigns in a country, to avoid any political use of his image.
The visit had been planned for both Argentina and Chile. But Argentina's election was scheduled for December 2017, immediately after the trip.
The idea had been to move it to January 2018, but he himself said that it's summer in Argentina that month, everyone is on vacation, and it didn't make much sense. In the end, it just got put off....
The last real opportunity was in the second half of 2024, as Pope Francis had announced. After that, the pope's health began to decline, and in the end, the trip never took place.
Pope Leo XIV will now carry out that mission himself with a visit to Argentina. He will first travel to Uruguay, another country that Pope Francis never went to. The last pope to visit both nations was John Paul II in the late 1980s.
