Gustavo Morello. The Catholic Church and Argentina’s Dirty War

In The Catholic Church and Argentina’s Dirty War, Gustavo Morello, a Jesuit sociologist from Argentina, attempts to provide a more nuanced interpretation of Argentina’s Catholic world during the 1976–1983 military dictatorship than previously found in other treatments of the subject. Scholars such as Emilio Mignone and journalists like Horacio Verbitsky have produced influential studies documenting the collaboration between the Catholic Church hierarchy and the military authorities during that dictatorship. In these accounts, the Catholic Church’s history in Argentina differed starkly from that found elsewhere at the time in Latin American countries under military rule such as Chile, El Salvador, and Brazil where the church was outspoken in its criticisms of the military’s brutal tactics and provided a haven for human rights activists and organizations. Morello does not deny such collaboration but he argues that these interpretations simplify how Catholics responded to the dictatorship, including the clergy, and thus ignore the motivations that influenced their behavior.

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