Kirchner celebrated the national day elsewhere the following year and the Mass in the Cathedral was

Fernando de la Rúa
Fernando de la Rúa replaced Carlos Menem as president of Argentina in 1999. As an archbishop, Bergoglio celebrated the annual Mass at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral on the First National Government holiday, 25 May. In 2000, Bergoglio criticized the perceived apathy of society.[127] During police repression of the riots of December 2001, he contacted the Ministry of the Interior and asked that the police distinguish rioters engaged in acts of vandalism from peaceful protesters.[128]
Kirchners


Pope Francis with Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
When Bergoglio celebrated Mass at the Cathedral for the 2004 First National Government holiday, President Néstor Kirchner attended and heard Bergoglio request more political dialogue, reject intolerance, and criticize exhibitionism and strident announcements.[129] Kirchner celebrated the national day elsewhere the following year and the Mass in the Cathedral was suspended.[130] Kirchner considered Bergoglio as a political rival to the day he died in October 2010.[131] Bergoglio's relations with Kirchner's widow and successor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, have been similarly tense. In 2008, Bergoglio called for national reconciliation during disturbances in the country's agricultural regions, which the government interpreted as a support for anti-government demonstrators.[131] The campaign to enact same-sex marriage legislation was a particularly tense period in their relations.[131]
In 2006, Bergoglio publicly opposed an attempt by the Argentine government to legalize some cases of abortion.[132] In 2007, after the government intervened to allow an abortion for a mentally handicapped woman who had been raped, Bergoglio said that "in Argentina we have the death penalty. A child conceived by the rape of a mentally ill or retarded woman can be condemned to death." Kirchner said in response that "the diagnosis of the Church in relation to social problems in Argentina is correct, but to mix that with abortion and euthanasia is at least a clear example of ideological malfeasance."[133][d]
In 2012, Bergoglio participated in the 30th anniversary commemoration of the Falklands War.[135]
On the day before his inauguration as pope, Bergoglio, now Francis, had a private meeting with Kirchner. They exchanged gifts and lunched together. This was the new pope's first meeting with a head of state, and there was speculation that the two were mending their relations

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nd human rights activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980, said: "Perhaps

Dirty War
Bergoglio was the subject of allegations regarding the kidnapping of two Jesuit priests during Argentina's "Dirty War".[107][108] He feared for the priests' safety and had tried to change their work prior to their arrest; however, contrary to reports, he never tried to throw them out of the Jesuit order.[109] In 2005, a human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against Bergoglio, as superior in the Society of Jesus of Argentina, accusing him of involvement in the Navy's kidnapping of the two priests in May 1976.[110] The lawyer's complaint did not specify the nature of Bergoglio's alleged involvement, and Bergoglio's spokesman flatly denied the allegations. The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.[107] The priests, Orlando Yorio and Franz Jalics, had been tortured,[111] but found alive five months later, drugged and semi-naked. Yorio accused Bergoglio of effectively handing them over to the death squads by declining to tell the regime that he endorsed their work. Yorio (who died in 2000) said in a 1999 interview that he believed that Bergoglio did nothing "to free us, in fact just the opposite".[112] Jalics initially refused to discuss the complaint after moving into seclusion in a German monastery.[113] However, two days after the election of Pope Francis, Jalics issued a statement confirming the kidnapping and attributing the cause to a former lay colleague who became a guerrilla, was captured, and named Yorio and Jalics when interrogated.[114] The following week, Jalics issued a second, clarifying statement: "It is wrong to assert that our capture took place at the initiative of Father Bergoglio ... the fact is, Orlando Yorio and I were not denounced by Father Bergoglio."[115][116]
Bergoglio told his authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, that after the priests' imprisonment, he worked behind the scenes for their release; Bergoglio's intercession with dictator Jorge Rafael Videla on their behalf may have saved their lives.[117] In 2010, Bergoglio told Sergio Rubin that he had often sheltered people from the dictatorship on church property, and once gave his own identity papers to a man who looked like him, so he could flee Argentina.[111] The interview with Rubin, reflected in the biography El jesuita, is the only time Bergoglio has spoken to the press about those events.[118] Alicia Oliveira, a former Argentine Judge, has also reported that Bergoglio helped people flee Argentina during the military regime.[119] Since Francis became Pope, Gonzalo Mosca[120] and José Caravias[121] have related to journalists accounts of how Bergoglio helped them flee the Argentine dictatorship.
Oliveira described the future Pope as "anguished" and "very critical of the dictatorship" during the "Dirty War".[122] Oliveira met with him at the time and urged Bergoglio to speak out—he told her that "he couldn't. That it wasn't an easy thing to do."[112] Artist and human rights activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980, said: "Perhaps he didn't have the courage of other priests, but he never collaborated with the dictatorship ... Bergoglio was no accomplice of the dictatorship."[123][124] Graciela Fernández Meijide, member of the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, also said that there was no proof linking Bergoglio with the dictatorship. She told Clarín: "There is no information and Justice couldn't prove it. I was in the APDH during all the dictatorship years and I received hundreds of testimonies. Bergoglio was never mentioned. It was the same in the CONADEP. Nobody mentioned him as instigator or as anything."[125] Ricardo Lorenzetti, President of the Argentine Supreme Court, also has said that Bergoglio is "completely innocent" of the accusations.[126]
Fernando de la Rúa
Fernando de la Rúa replaced Carlos Menem as president of Argentina in 1999. As an archbishop, Bergoglio celebrated the annual Mass at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral on the First National Government holiday, 25 May. In 2000, Bergoglio criticized the perceived apathy of society.[127] During police repression of the riots of December 2001, he contacted the Ministry of the Interior and asked that the police distinguish rioters engaged in acts of vandalism from peaceful protesters.[128]
Kirchners

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